April 4, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



513 



violate fundamental actuarial conditions, and 

 have been framed without study of the essen- 

 tial conditions which must be fulfilled by any 

 adequate pension system. The material 

 brought together in this report, the examples 

 of the failures of pension systems which have 

 occurred — as, for example, that in New South 

 Wales — and the precarious situation in which 

 many state pension systems now stand, make 

 this portion of the report one of great prac- 

 tical value to the authorities of any state con- 

 templating pensions either for teachers or for 

 state employees. 



President Pritchett, in arguing finally for 

 some form of contributory pension system for 

 public school teachers, points out clearly the 

 difiiculties of the contributory system, the 

 necessity for the most careful actuarial advice 

 and the public nature of the questions which 

 are involved in a distribution of the cost of 

 such a pension system between the state and 

 the teacher. 



Following the discussion of these pensions, 

 a complete history of the methods by which 

 the Carnegie Foundation pensions were arrived 

 at is given; the process through which the 

 trustees worked is told in the frankest man- 

 ner; the difficulties which they encountered 

 and the differences which arose out of the fact 

 that the pensions of the Carnegie Foundation 

 are not contributory, but have come as the 

 result of a free gift, are made clear. The 

 literature on pensions now at the disposal of 

 the foundation is probably the most complete 

 in the statement of such problems that has 

 ever been brought together, and the discussion 

 here made can not fail to be of value to a 

 college, a state or an industrial association 

 which is studying the pension problem; and 

 the pension problem to-day is one of the in- 

 sistent problems of modern social progress. 



The second part of the report is devoted to 

 such subjects as the matter of college entrance 

 requirements, admission to advanced stand- 

 ing, a statement of medical progress, univer- 

 sity and college financial reporting, adver- 

 tising as a factor in education, education and 

 politics, and finally, sham universities. 



All of these subjects are discussed in the 



frank and specific manner which has hitherto 

 been used in these reports. In recounting the 

 extraordinary medical progress of the last five 

 years attention is called to the connection 

 which still exists in the United States between 

 reputable colleges and unworthy medical 

 schools. The lessons of the recent Bulletin 

 on Medical Education in Europe are also 

 brought clearly forward. During the last five 

 years the mortality among unworthy medical 

 schools has been most satisfactory. The num- 

 ber of such schools in the United States has 

 been reduced by about one third and the 

 number of students attending them by about 

 one quarter, and this diminution has occurred 

 in exactly the places where it ought to occur 

 — namely, in the elimination of the unfit. 



The section devoted to education and poli- 

 tics discusses not only the recent remarkable 

 changes in the University of Oklahoma, the 

 University of Kentucky and the University of 

 Montana, but also deals with two other tend- 

 encies in political life which are profoundly 

 afl^ecting education: first, with the rivalry 

 which comes from competing state institu- 

 tions, and secondly with the practise inaugu- 

 rated almost wholly within the last ten years 

 in states where there are no state universities, 

 of subsidizing institutions that are under 

 private control. In a number of states this 

 process has gone on until it has enormously 

 increased the number of privately controlled 

 institutions which share in state appropria- 

 tions. So marked has this tendency become 

 that the question of state appropriation to 

 education without state control is one which 

 ought now to be frankly and squarely met. 



Under sham universities the report deals 

 with conditions such as hold, for example, in 

 the District of Columbia, where commercial 

 enterprises without endowment or facilties are 

 chartered as educational institutions under 

 the loosest conditions, which enable them to 

 appeal to the credulity of ignorant students 

 throughout this and other countries under 

 high-sounding names and under the shelter of 

 charters granted by the general government. 

 A bill now before Congress aims to correct 

 this situation. 



