Mabch 18, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



429 



Williams and probably by a number of other 

 institutions. 



Because of the ambiguities of the reports in 

 respect to the exact number of sections, the 

 exact share taken by each officer of instruc- 

 tion engaged in a course, the conduct of lab- 

 oratory and composition courses and the like, 

 it was not possible, without asking much as- 

 sistance from many colleges, to determine the 

 exact frequencies of classes of all sizes. But 

 the figures of Table I., which are approxi- 

 mately correct, will give a sufficient idea of 

 this enormous variability. It is even greater 

 in large colleges like the University of Cali- 

 fornia, Harvard or Stanford. 



TABLE I 



Relative frequencies of different sizes of class in 

 American colleges, a class being defined as a 

 group taught iy only one person. In per cents. 



There is also great variability amongst in- 

 stitutions with respect to the provision for 

 teaching the same subject-matter. The first- 

 and second-year courses in French and Ger- 

 man, for example, are, in one college, given to 

 sections of 13 students and, in another, to sec- 

 tions of 41 students. The first course in phi- 

 losophy or in psychology is in some institu- 



'Also 1.1 at 200 and .5 at 220. 

 ' A course in chemistry. Help in the laboratory 

 is probably given by others than the one instructor. 

 °A course in hygiene. 



tions divided into sections of 40 students, 

 while in others the entire class of two hun- 

 dred or more is left to one teacher, with 

 presumably some assistance in the examina- 

 tion of written work. Similar differences 

 exist in the case of all departments enrolling 

 many students. In some institutions the en- 

 rollment is less than ten in only a sixth of the 

 classes, while some devote nearly haK of the 

 teaching hours of their staff to the conduct of 

 classes of less than ten students. 



It is not the purpose of this report to dis- 

 cuss this condition of college teaching, but it 

 is the committee's opinion that the following 

 questions are worthy of discussion in college, 

 faculties and by those responsible for the 

 financial provision for college instruction. 



1. Is not the number of students taught at 

 one time by a single individual in many col- 

 lege courses so great as to reduce that indi- 

 vidual's knowledge of the attitude, prepara- 

 tion, difficulties, errors and achievements of 

 his students to almost zero? 



2. Is not the number of students taught at 

 one time by a single individual in many col- 

 lege courses so small as to involve an enormous 

 waste of the instructor's time and an im- 

 proper distribution of the appropriations for 

 teaching ? 



3. Other things being equal, should not the 

 teaching of more than 40 college students at 

 one time by one person be avoided? Should 

 not any department have reasons of weight 

 for any such case? 



4. Other things being equal, should not the 

 use of a quarter or more of a professor's teach- 

 ing hours for a year for the instruction of 

 fewer than ten students in one undergraduate 

 course counting one twentieth or less of the 

 degree's total requirement be avoided ? Should 

 not any department have reasons of weight 

 for any such case ? 



5. Should not the traditional method of 

 having the ratio which the number of class 

 meetings is to the number of " points " credit 

 the same, regardless of whether the class en- 

 rollment is 1, 5, 10, 20 or 100, be abandoned 

 in many of the undergraduate courses enroll- 

 ing less than 10 students? 



