December 20, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



843 



what ought to be done to improve the col- 

 lege. I was one of the visitors. I found 

 that the college was divided into two inde- 

 pendent departments, one theoretical and 

 the other practical, each presided over by 

 a professor who was responsible only to the 

 president. I spent a morning with one of 

 these professors and an afternoon with the 

 other. Each told a tale of woe, about the 

 utter worthlessness and total depravity of 

 the other man. I advised the dismissal of 

 both, and the appointment of a man who 

 was big enough to be the head of the whole 

 college. Some months were spent by the 

 president of the university in getting these 

 reports and in interviewing different ex- 

 perts, including men whose names had been 

 suggested as qualified for the position. He 

 selected the right man, gave him full au- 

 thority, approved his every request, and the 

 trustees gave him everything he asked for 

 in the way of competent assistants and ad- 

 ditional equipment. The theoretical pro- 

 fessor resigned, and the practical one 

 gracefully subsided into a minor subordi- 

 nate position, where he gave no trouble. 

 The college grew with great rapidity. In 

 ten years it was in the front rank of the 

 engineering colleges of the world, which 

 position it still holds. 



Note the points of similarity between the 

 factory and the university as related in 

 these two stories. Each was suffering from 

 inefficient management, each had a presi- 

 dent who was ignorant of the details of the 

 business, but who was conscious of his ig- 

 norance and was willing to take advice 

 from outside. In each case the advice was 

 taken, with the best possible results. 



My subject is entitled Academic Effi- 

 ciency. I use this short term merely because 

 it has been used before to mean the effi- 

 ciency of educational methods, and it may be 

 necessary to explain that the word academic 

 here means relating to an academy or edu- 



cational establishment, and not, as it some- 

 times means, "unreal" or "unpractical." 

 The word efficiency is often used with dif- 

 ferent meanings. Dr. Eliot, ex-president 

 of Harvard University, in his little book on 

 "Education for Efficiency" defines it as 

 "effective power for work and service dur- 

 ing a healthy and active life" and he says: 



National education will be effective in propor- 

 tion as it secures in the masses the development 

 of this power and its application in infinitely 

 various forms to the national industries and the 

 national service. 



The engineer uses a more restricted and 

 technical definition, the quotient of output 

 divided by input, or the relation or ratio of 

 the result achieved to the effort in obtain- 

 ing it. Mr. Harrington Emerson objects 

 to this definition as insufficient in its not 

 including an equitable standard of achieve- 

 ment or output as one of its factors, and 

 defines efficiency as the "relation between 

 an equitable standard and an actual 

 achievement," or "the relation between 

 what is and what could be." 



Strictly speaking, the engineer's defini- 

 tion is limited to cases in which both the 

 input and the output may be measured in 

 the same unit, or in units that are convert- 

 ible one into the other, such as foot-pounds 

 and heat-units, but it is a convenient defi- 

 nition for many cases in which neither the 

 whole output nor the whole input is capa- 

 ble of accurate measurement in similar 

 terms. For example : 



We spend or give We get or gain 



(Input) (Output) 



Time Money or salable goods 



Money or raw material Health 



Physical labor Recreation 



Mental labor Education 



Nervous energy Satisfaction 

 Health 

 Wear and tear of machinery 



If we take the engineers' definition ex- 

 panded in this way so as to include in the 



