July 10, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



41 



We shall assume that there are 200 stu- 

 dents in department D^ and 100 in depart- 

 ment -Z>2. The two groups of students need 

 not be mutually exclusive. A student may- 

 be doing work in both departments, or in 

 one department only. The further assump- 

 tion will be made that in department X^i a 

 student works 25 hours per week, in de- 

 partment D„ 20 hours per week, in class- 

 room and laboratory. In addition, in de- 

 partment -Di each student works 25 hours 

 per week in preparation for class; in de- 

 partment I>2, 40 hours per week.' The 

 year consists of 30 weeks, so that there are, 

 in department 



Z>i, 50 X 30 X 200 ^ 300,000 student hrs. per year. 

 Dj, 60 X 30 X 100 = 180,000 student hrs. per year. 



Finally, the tuition fee paid by each stu- 

 dent will be assumed to be $150 per year. 

 "With these data we may proceed to the de- 

 termination of costs per workman per hour. 



The writer does not know any equitable 

 basis for the distribution of general admin- 

 istration charges. They are certainly not 

 necessarily allocable in proportion to the 

 number of students in a department, nor 

 in proportion to the number of student 

 working hours, nor in proportion to the 

 number of hours of teaching. A small de- 

 partment may, from the nature of its work, 

 require more administrative attention than 

 a large one. On the whole it seems best, in 

 the absence of exact information, to allo- 

 cate the general administration costs 

 equally to the several departments. 



The general administration costs of our 

 hypothetical college are, therefore (see 

 Table I.), $20,000 plus $16,800, or $36,800, 

 of which $18,400 are chargeable to each 

 department. From this and from Table I. 

 we compute Table II., which summarizes all 

 the data. 



3 No account is taken of liome or preparation 

 work done by the instructing staff. 



TABLE n 



General administration costs . . . $18,400 $18,400 

 Departmental administration 



costs $13,500 $5,800 



Wages of instruction $33,000 $33,400 



Working hours, teachers 8,000 6,400 



Working hours, students 300,000 180,000 



Total working hours 308,000 186,400 



Total costs $64,900 $57,600 



Tuition fees $30,000 $15,000 



Net costs $34,900 $42,600 



Net cost per working hour $.113 $.229 



in 



Examination of the assumed data will 

 disclose the fact that the D^Do college is a 

 rather costly institution. Department D^ 

 pays $60,000 in salaries to 30 teachers, for 

 8,000 hours' instruction per year, for 200 

 students (there are 4,000 administration 

 hours in addition) so that the average num- 

 ber of hours instruction per teacher per 

 week is a little less than 9, and there are 

 6% students to each instructor. In de- 

 partment D2, 20 teachers receive $42,500 

 for 6,400 hours to 100 students, or about 10 

 hours per instructor per week, with 5 stu- 

 dents to each instructor. 



That the cost per working hour is so low 

 is due to the neglect of most of the items of 

 overhead burden, such as rent, power, heat, 

 etc. But as our object is to test what con- 

 clusions may be logically drawn from costs 

 computed on a correct theory of account- 

 ancy, and as we have no intention of at- 

 tempting to apply our present results in 

 practise, the omissions are unimportant. 



It will be noted that the cost per working 

 hour is much greater in department D2 

 than in department D^. If, however, we 

 do not analyze the salaries paid to the in- 

 structing staff into their components, and 

 if, instead of dividing the administration 

 costs equally between the two departments, 

 we allot them in proportion to the number 

 of working hours, the workman-hour costs 

 of the two departments approach much 



