244 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 816 



answer, the meaning of the cytological facts 

 will not become entirely clear. 



Edmund B. Wilson 

 Woods Hole, JIass., 

 August 5, 1910 



HIGHER EDUCATION IN PITTSBURGH: A COMPARA- 

 TIVE STUDY OF SALARIES 



In the numerous articles on the question of 

 college and university salaries that have re- 

 cently appeared there seems to be a perfect 

 unanimity of opinion that, considering the 

 high services rendered, the salaries of teachers 

 are altogether too small. The conviction 

 seems quite general that teachers are less ade- 

 quately paid than any other class of workers. 

 The figures published in the bulletins and 

 reports of the Carnegie Foundation for the 

 Advancement of Teaching have further deep- 

 ened and enforced this conviction. 



In these reports two classes of figures have 

 been given, the average and the maximum 

 salaries of professors and other teachers. But 

 the minimum salaries of teachers and the sal- 

 aries of presidents have not been given. Had 

 these been included in the reports it is quite 

 likely that the conception would have been 

 still further deepened that teachers are poorly 

 paid. In some institutions the minimum 

 salaries are distressingly low, and ailord the 

 best basis for reckoning the actual conditions. 

 After an experience of some years in the 

 University of Pittsburgh I have been inter- 

 ested in a comparison of salaries which I here- 

 with present as possibly of general interest. 



I have not been able to obtain figures for all 

 the institutions I wished to include in the 

 comparison, as the view seems to prevail that 

 the business of universities, other than state 

 institutions, is the private affair of the trus- 

 tees and need not be given to the public. The 

 figures I give have been taken from official 

 reports and from Carnegie Foundation publi- 

 cations, or have been received directly from 

 officers of the various institutions. In all 

 cases the figures used are the salaries of full 

 professors, and for the academic year 1908-09 

 only, except where comparison is directly 

 made with other years. No doubt in some 



cases the figures for the past year, 1909-10, 

 would differ from these, but they are not yet 

 available. 



A curious fact about Pittsburgh is that the 

 high school pays uniformly better salaries 

 than the university, except in the single case 

 of the heads of the institutions. In the high 

 schools of the city, the minimum for pro- 

 fessors is $2,000, in the university $1,200; 

 while the maximum in the high schools is 

 $2,500, and in the university $1,800. Sim- 

 ilarly, the high-school principals receive 

 $3,000, and the university deans $2,000. On 

 the other hand, the director of high schools 

 receives $4,000, while the chancellor of the 

 university receives $7,500. Thus it appears 

 that high-school teaching pays much better 

 than university teaching, but high-school ad- 

 ministration pays only a little better than half 

 as well. Every year it happens, therefore, 

 that students in going from the high school 

 to the university pass up to teachers receiving 

 much less than their preparatory teachers, but 

 come under a chancellor who receives almost 

 twice as much as their high-school director. 

 It may be said in passing that the high school 

 has a regular schedule of salaries, whereas 

 none exists for the university, each teacher 

 being engaged on an individual salary. 



It should be said in fairness that the fore- 

 going figures for the University of Pittsburgh 

 are in some respects different from those of 

 previous years. For some time preceding the 

 academic year of 1908-9, one salary of $2,500 

 had been paid. But for that year, that and 

 another of $1,800 were dispensed with, and in 

 their places two of $1,500 and $800 were given, 

 the latter to an instructor. A saving of $2,000 

 was thus made for the university; but as the 

 chancellor for the same year received an in- 

 crease from $6,000 to $7,500, the net saving to 

 the university was only $500. 



An interesting set of facts can be obtained 

 by a comparison of the average salaries of 

 professors of the University of Pittsburgh for 

 several successive years. The second annual 

 report of the president and treasurer of the 

 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of 

 Teaching, published October, 1907 (p. 24), 



