Febbuaey 25, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



283' 



If we assume that Harvard and Columbia 

 are to have in the next generation faculties 

 of two thousand instead of two hundred, if 

 we assume that salaries are to be greatly 

 increased, and if we assume that every 

 professor is to claim his retiring allowance 

 the moment it is available to him under 

 the rules, it is clear that the large endow- 

 ment of the foundation will be inadequate 

 for even those institutions which have been 

 admitted. 



The truth is, however, that the matter is 

 only in a partial sense an actuary's prob- 

 lem ; all these assumptions do not detract 

 from the fact that a well informed and 

 conscientious body of trustees can, with the 

 amount of income now in their control 

 (some $800,000), maintain a satisfactory 

 system of retiring allowances for perhaps 

 five thousand teachers, distributed in about 

 one hundred and twenty institutions. To 

 do this is mainly a problem of common 

 sense and fairness, not one of actuarial 

 computation. 



This is the practical advice which the 

 trustees received from the actuaries them- 

 selves at the beginning of their administra- 

 tion. They said: 



The problem is only partly actuarial. No man 

 can possibly predict what will happen under any 

 assumed method of retirement. Frame your rules 

 according to your judgment of what will best serve 

 the interests of the teachers, within the general 

 estimates indicated. Reserve carefully the power 

 to amend your rules of retirement as circum- 

 stances may require, and go forward to acquire 

 such experience as will enable j^ou to make per- 

 manent and final rules. 



This is the course which the trustees pur- 

 sued ; there was really no other open to 

 them. They adopted certain rules for the 

 granting of retiring allowances, always 

 accompanying the statement of the rules 

 with the following provision: 



The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement 

 of Teaching retains the power to alter these rules 



in such manner as experience may indicate as 

 desirable for the benefit of the whole body of 



teachers. 



This was accompanied by the additional 

 statement that a pension once granted 

 would not be affected by a subsequent 

 change in the rules. 



THE ADOPTION OF THE PRESENT RULES 



It was after such conference with expert 

 actuaries that the present rules were 

 framed. At that time a smaller number of 

 institutions seemed likely to be eligible 

 than has since proved to be the case. The 

 state institutions have within the last year 

 been made eligible, and many colleges 

 which at that time had denominational re- 

 strictions of a legal sort have since removed 

 them and have become thereby eligible for 

 consideration. The most the trustees hoped 

 for at that time was to establish retiring 

 allowances in enough institutions to bring 

 in the retiring allowance plan as a part of 

 American college administration. As 

 stated in the first annual report, pages 30, 

 31: 



It is estimated that an income of $500,000 will 

 maintain a system of retiring allowances, upon 

 the scale adopted, for something over three thou- 

 sand professors. This would correspond to the 

 admission of somewhere between one hundred and 

 one hundred and twenty institutions to the ac- 

 cepted list. . . . The establishment of an effective 

 system of retiring allowances in one hundred in- 

 stitutions in the United States and Canada will 

 contribute vastly more to the introduction of the 

 retiring pay principle in American education than 

 the maintenance of a charitable fund for a much 

 larger number of institutions. Once the principle 

 is established, and in so large a number of insti- 

 tutions as this, it will be necessary for institu- 

 tions which for any reason are not eligible to this 

 list to provide such retiring allowances for pro- 

 fessors from other sources. This estimate, though 

 only an approximate one, brings squarely before 

 the trustees the consideration of the probable limit 

 of the fund itself. 



Much thought was given to the framing 

 of such I'ules as might best serve the inter- 



