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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 708 



thirty-five institutions making reports the 

 average salary of the full professor is less 

 than five hundred dollars a year. These 

 salaries are poor enough under any cir- 

 cumstances, but it must be remembered 

 that most of the institutions paying such 

 salaries are not colleges in any sense, ex- 

 cept that they are called colleges and that 

 they confer collegiate degrees. These 

 poorly paid professors are therefore not 

 really doing the work of higher education, 

 nor have they in most cases given them- 

 selves adequate preparation for college 

 teaching. In the vast majority of cases 

 these professors are teaching high-school 

 and even grammar-school subjects; they 

 have devoted to their training only the 

 time ordinarily given to preparation by a 

 teacher in secondary education; and their 

 salaries, although small, are not so utterly 

 incommensurate as they would be if paid 

 to a professor doing collegiate work. 



To study the financial standing of the 

 teachers in all of the degree-granting in- 

 stitutions would therefore be to deal with 

 a large number of institutions that are 

 simply high schools. Conclusions drawn 

 from such a heterogeneous group woiTld be 

 of little value. Yet td draw a line across 

 this ascending scale of college salary 

 budgets is a difficult task. "Wherever the 

 line is drawn there will be reasons for 

 moving it down to include a few more in- 

 stitutions or up to have it exclude a few 

 others. 



It will necessarily be an arbitrary line, 

 but at one place in the gradation of insti- 

 tutions it will be less an arbitrary line 

 than if drawn at any other place. A 

 glance at Table I. shows that at the point 

 where forty-five thousand dollars a year is 

 spent on salaries to the instructing staff 

 the number of institutions drops sharply. 

 Above this abrupt drop are one hundred 

 and three institutions. Let us, therefore, 

 take these institutions as typical of Ameri- 



can higher education, and see what are the 

 results obtained from an analysis of the 

 status of their professors and instructors. 

 Table II. gives these one hundred and 

 three institutions, with their appropriate 

 figures, in the order of their annual ex- 

 penditure in teachers' salaries. 



It may be that there are colleges not in- 

 cluded in Table II. which are better repre- 

 sentatives of higher education than some 

 which are there listed. The table does not 

 pretend to give the one hundred institu- 

 tions in America which are the best from 

 an educational point of view, any more 

 than the arrangement of institutions in the 

 table is meant to indicate anything beyond 

 the total size of the annual salary ac- 

 counts. The value of this table is that it 

 is an impersonal selection of colleges and 

 universities according to a fairly repre- 

 sentative criterion. For the purpose of 

 this table, it is more valuable to have the 

 selection made according to an objective 

 standard which every one can estimate, 

 than to have a more exact approximation 

 into which personal judgment enters. 



The foundation recognizes, however, 

 that the salary budget of an institution is 

 closely related to the size of the institu- 

 tion, and that the size of a college is an 

 imperfect method of estimating its educa- 

 tional value. Table IX., in a later part of 

 this paper, is therefore intended as a 

 necessary supplement to Table II. It con- 

 tains the names of fifty-four institutions, 

 which were not included in Table II. on 

 account of the comparative smallness of 

 their expenditure for salaries, and yet 

 which in the opinion of the foundation 

 ought to be considered if the higher edu- 

 cation of the United States is to be rightly 

 estimated. Table IX. and the discussion 

 thereon will show what excellent educa- 

 tional results can be obtained by resources 

 which are within moderate limits. 



These two tables, the one a purely ob- 



