584 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 982 



does best who works as you do in medicine 

 with the profoundest theoretical problems 

 and the most intensely practical interests 

 at once pressing upon him, with the widest 

 and most philosophical breadth of view, 

 and the most faithful special labor, at once 

 demanding attention. 



JOSIAH ROYCE 



Harvard University 



SOME TABLES OF STUDENT SOUBS OF 

 INSTRUCTION 



In the days of President Dunster, the pub- 

 lications of Harvard University gave the cur- 

 liculum leading to the first degree in arts in 

 a single sentence thus : " The first year shall 

 teach Rhetoric, second and third years Dia- 

 lectics, and the fourth year shall add Philos- 

 ■ophy." In no such simple form are the re- 

 quirements for graduation set forth in a mod- 

 ern college catalogue. To determine exactly 

 what studies must and what studies may be 

 included in the college course calls in most 

 cases for much study. To learn even approxi- 

 mately how many undergraduates, or what 

 proportion of the undergraduates, are taking 

 courses in any particular subject is in general 

 impossible from the college catalogue. In 

 some departments, many courses are oilered, 

 while few students elect; in other departments, 

 few courses are offered and many students 

 take them. At a few institutions the enroll- 

 ment figures for all classes are now available 

 in the published reports of the president or 

 other officer, but in most cases one must call 

 ■on the recording office to obtain such figures. 



For the sake of the interest which the com- 

 parison of such statistics from many institu- 

 tions may afford, the following tables have 

 been prepared. They give the registration in 

 the various subjects at eighteen more or less 

 Tepresentative American colleges and univer- 

 sities. In the first table the numbers of " stu- 

 dent hours of instruction " are given by sub- 

 jects, while the second table gives the same 

 facts in a form more suitable for comparison 

 of the work of different institutions, since in 

 it all the figures have been reduced to, and are 



expressed in, percentages. These statistics rest 

 on a semester basis and include in general 

 only undergraduates — candidates for the first 

 degree; accordingly, special students and par- 

 tial course students and all graduate students, 

 so far as possible, have been omitted. Fur- 

 thermore, in the cases of the universities, only 

 the college of arts, or the college of letters 

 and science, according as that school of the 

 university is named, has ordinarily been in- 

 cluded. Thus, the Columbia statistics refer 

 only to Columbia College, the Yale statistics 

 to Yale College, the Harvard statistics to 

 Harvard College, the Wisconsin statistics to 

 the college of letters and science, etc. It is 

 only fair to state at once, however, that the 

 great diversity in the grouping of the work 

 of the universities in different schools makes 

 the results here given unsatisfactory for com- 

 parison in the cases of the universities. One 

 university appears to include all of its under- 

 graduate work in engineering in the college 

 of letters, while a second university includes 

 only a little in that school, and a third none. 

 Other differences of similar sort have been 

 found in comparing the figures from the uni- 

 versities. No such difficulties arise with re- 

 gard to the statistics of the colleges and it is 

 believed that the tables are entitled to fuU 

 credence for purposes of comparison so far as 

 all the fourteen or fifteen smaller institutions 

 included are concerned. 



The figures have been submitted in most 

 cases by the registrar for the purpose of this 

 paper, but in a few instances they have been 

 compiled from the printed report of the presi- 

 dent, dean or registrar. 



A " student hour of instruction," as that 

 term is used here, means the taking of a course 

 of one hour per week by one student through 

 one semester. Thus, a class of twenty stu- 

 dents taking a three-hours-per-week course in 

 English for two semesters gives 120 student 

 hours of instruction in English. The number 

 of student hours of instruction in any course 

 for any semester is obtained by multiplying 

 the number of students in the course by the 

 number of hours per week which that course 

 counts towards graduation; ordinarily, in a 



