846 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 938 



the student gets for the expenditure of the 

 thousands of student-hours that he spends 

 in college. We have as yet no standards of 

 measurement by which educational effi- 

 ciency can be satisfactorily measured, but 

 it can not be doubted that some day such 

 standards will be found, when well-quali- 

 fied experts are employed to find them. 

 For a method of obtaining such a standard 

 in English composition, see the writer's 

 paper in Proceedings of the Society for the 

 Promotion of Engineering Education in 

 1907 on "An Experiment in Teaching 

 English to Freshmen in a University. ' ' 



Efficiency, according to the engineers' 

 definition, is the relation of output to input, 

 or the relation of the result to the effort 

 and cost expended in achieving it. From 

 the college student's standpoint, the input 

 is four years of time and say $2,000 to 

 $4,000 in money. The output is what he re- 

 ceives for that amount of time and money. 

 Let us put what he receives in tabular form 

 under two heads, life and study. 



Acquaintance. 



Companionship. 



Fraternity. 



Social activity. 



Athletics. 



Eeading. 



Leisure. 



Travel. 



Moral uplift. 



Disciplinary. 



Information. 



Life 



■ Cultural j 



Study 



Technical 



Curious 



fir 



Foundations of 

 Science and Art. 



Relating directly 

 to life work. 



Non-useful or 

 dilettante. 



How many hours out of the 24 in a day 

 are student-hours, and how many are de- 

 voted to so-called college life? Is his time 

 properly divided between the activities of 



life and study? Of the student-hours is 

 there the proper balance between the cul- 

 tural and the other branches? How and 

 by whom is this balance determined? 

 Which of the courses are prescribed and 

 which are elective, and why? What text- 

 books are used, and why? Are particular 

 courses taught by the text-book and recita- 

 tion methods, by the lecture and notebook 

 method, by the problem method, or by the 

 laboratory method? Is each teacher free 

 to use his own method or is the method de- 

 termined on by a department head or com- 

 mittee or by other authority? What ex- 

 perimental pedagogical work has been done 

 to discover the relative efficiency of differ- 

 ent methods ? What are the results of such 

 experiments? Have they been reduced to 

 statistical form and published? What is 

 the administration doing to improve edu- 

 cational efficiency? Is there any method 

 employed to measure the relative efficiency 

 of different teachers, or of the same teacher 

 in different years or when using different 

 methods? How are the tenures of office, 

 promotion, salary, etc., determined? How 

 are poor teachers got rid of or transferred 

 to other positions in which they may be 

 more efficient. What is the organization 

 of the college, and what are the efficiencies 

 of the board of trustees, the president, and 

 the heads of departments? If an investi- 

 gator like Mr. Cooke, or preferably a com- 

 mission of investigators, were to report to 

 the Carnegie Foundation answers to these 

 questions after a year's examination of a 

 dozen or more institutions of learning, it is 

 safe to say that an appalling lack of effi- 

 ciency would be disclosed. The commission 

 would find every grade of goodness and 

 of badness in the teaching staff, teachers 

 generally overworked, underpaid and dis- 

 satisfied and on the lookout for positions 

 elsewhere. It would find self-perpetuating 

 boards of trustees responsible to nobody, 



