532 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



lax, or the student may have been admitted at his own peril when safe- 

 guards ought to have been provided to shield him from certain failure. 

 No guarantee of success can ever be given; but, if he fails, his mis- 

 fortune ought not to be due to the imposition of a standard that is 

 possible for only the exceptional man unless the subject is one that 

 implies exceptional scholarship. Unnecessary failure is a calamity, 

 and a fairly good student has the right to expect reasonable protection 

 from it. Few institutions, however, venture upon such indiscriminate 

 slaughter of the innocents as is implied in the case just cited. There 

 may, of course, be exceptions, but in the majority of cases the real 

 value of a diploma at the end of four years is quite fairly propor- 

 tioned to the value of the entrance requirements at the beginning of 

 that period. 



The requirement of six professors giving their entire time to college 

 work is one to which probably no exception can be taken by any who 

 have real knowledge of the meaning of such work. A college to be 

 successful must be well organized. Its head must be energetic, tactful, 

 a good judge of men, thoroughly appreciative of high scholarship, a 

 keen detector of efficiency in teaching, and the possessor of exceptional 

 administrative power. Each professor must not only know his own 

 subject, and how to teach it, but must be single-minded in his devotion 

 to the interests of the institution. To devote most of his time, or even 

 any considerable part of it, to the practise of a profession, with teach- 

 ing thrown in as an incidental, is to ensure the sacrifice of the student's 

 interests. Through the medium of the press he should keep in touch 

 with the public, and especially with the educational and scientific world, 

 but his main work is in connection with his students, and his income 

 should be such as to make outside work unnecessary. So small a num- 

 ber as six of such men is scarcely sufficient to carry on the work of any 

 modern college. If the New York law is objectionable the fault con- 

 sists in prescribing a number that is too small rather than too large for 

 a minimum. 



The assignment of $200,000 as a lower limit for the productive 

 endowment of a college is a very moderate recognition of what is im- 

 plied in college teaching. With five per cent, as the rate of interest 

 such a college would have but $10,000 as its income aside from students' 

 fees. Assuming one hundred paying students at $100 each, the income 

 is thus raised to $20,000. Of this, three fifths may be allowed for the 

 cost of instruction, the rest being absorbed in the expenses of admin- 

 istration and operation. A salary allowance of but $2,000 is hence left 

 for each of six professors, the president's salary being included in the 

 cost of administration. The ratio of students to professors would be 

 100 to 6, or nearly 17, a number too large for the best efficiency. For 

 reasons locally deemed satisfactory, many students are usually admitted 

 without the payment of tuition, with no allowance to the professor for 



