770 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 750 



efficiency— a greater and greater share of 

 the instruction falls upon the shoulders of 

 the body of less experienced men and the 

 student has a decreasing chance of work- 

 ing with men who have attained eminence 

 in his line. Each recent alumnus can 

 test the truth of this by asking himself 

 how large a share of his work brought him 

 into actual close and beneficial contact 

 with the full professors in his course. 

 Believing that the influence of personality 

 is one of the most vital elements in train- 

 ing, we can but deplore the trends which 

 separate more and more widely the stu- 

 dent from intimate contact with men who 

 have won recognition for success in his 

 field of study. 



Another item vitally affecting the effi- 

 ciency of instruction is that this large 

 number of instructors and assistants (from 

 fifty per cent, to sixty-five per cent, of the 

 staff) consists of men on temporary ap- 

 pointments, so that it is no unusual thing 

 for one half of them to be entirely new 

 appointees at the beginning of each year. 

 The cause for this we will take up later. 

 At present we will content ourselves by ask- 

 ing what can be the sole effect on the effi- 

 ciency of a staff which annually loses a 

 large proportion of somewhat trained and 

 experienced men, whose places must be 

 filled by beginners who must familiarize 

 themselves with their new duties and be 

 trained up to adequacy? 



2. As regards the effect of these trends 

 on the opportunities offered by university 

 teaching as a profession, it need only be 

 said that a man in the lower grades has 

 just one third the chance of Avinning a 

 place in a twenty per cent, group that he 

 had of winning one in a sixty per cent. 

 group. A study of the increasing average 

 age in the ranks of associate and assistant 

 professors at our universities bears this 

 out. 



Can it be expected that young men of 



spirit will enter a profession which offers 

 such decreasing chances of winning pro- 

 motion, however well deserved, coupled 

 with inadequate salary from the very 

 start? "What will be the effect on the 

 teaching profession of a continuation of 

 the trends shown by Charts 8 to 12? In- 

 teresting and valuable as is the recent Bul- 

 letin No. 2 of the Carnegie Foundation 

 dealing with the "Financial Status of the 

 Professor in America and Germany," it is 

 of limited significance in making clear the 

 actual conditions — for the full professors 

 form but a small and rapidly diminishing 

 proportion of our entire teaching staffs — a 

 fact which seems to have escaped recog- 

 nition. 



Charts 13-17 show, that while in 1885 

 (at the beginning of the great upward 

 wave of attendance) there was one full 

 professor to from fifteen to thirty stu- 

 dents, we now find forty to eighty stu- 

 dents per full professor. In view of these 

 charts of composition of staff, the writer 

 maintains that it is the instructorship and 

 not the professorship which is the key to 

 the situation as regards efficiency. We 

 will return to this point after taking up 

 the next phase of our topic. 



Next, approaching a vital aspect of effi- 

 cient staff and service, we touch the ques- 

 tion of trend of salaries. 



It is to be feared that the world at large 

 fails to appreciate our fine distinctions of 

 adjunct professors, associate professors, 

 full professors, senior professors, deans, 

 and directors. To the man in the street 

 we are all "professor," weaxy as we may 

 grow of the title, and he looks to us to live 

 up to our position. If we wish to study 

 the actual compensation to which a man 

 in any field may look forward, it is quite 

 significant to know the average compensa- 

 tion of those who may be considered as 

 journejmien. Leaving out all under the 

 rank of instructor as apprentices. Charts 



