962 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. No. 547. 



has been effected in this respect, so that at 

 the present day there are few prominent uni- 

 versities in the country where the number of 

 faculty members who hold a Ph.D. degree 

 from another university is not larger than the 

 number of those who received the degree from 

 the institution in which they are giving in- 

 struction. There has been a noticeable change 

 during the past decade also in the percentage 

 of degrees received from foreign universities, 

 and while there has been no perceptible de- 

 crease in the actual number of degrees taken 

 abroad, there has been of course a consider- 

 able increase in the number conferred by 

 American universities. In 1884 only 28 Ph.D. 

 degrees were granted on examination by Amer- 

 ican universities; ten years later (in 1894) 

 there were 233, and fifteen years later (in 1899) 

 there were 325. 



Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns 

 Hopkins, Pennsylvania and Yale are the uni- 

 versities that are turning out the largest num- 

 ber of doctors, and it may be of interest to 

 know how these universities, as well as a num- 

 ber of other representative institutions of 

 .higher learning, stand in the matter of ' in- 

 breeding.' In the following figures only in- 

 structors of professorial rank, having a seat 

 in one or another of the university faculties, 

 are considered. In only three institutions is 

 the number of degrees received from the home 

 university larger than that received elsewhere, 

 namely, in the case of Yale, where 46 of the 

 67 professors holding the Ph.D. degree, or 

 69 per cent., received it from Yale and 21 from 

 other institutions; in the case of Johns Hop- 

 kins, where 27 out of 41, or 66 per cent., re- 

 ceived it from Johns Hopkins and 14 from 

 elsewhere; and in the case of Pennsylvania, 

 where 26 out of 45, or 58 per cent., received 

 it from Pennsylvania and 19 from elsewhere. 

 The other institutions from which figures were 

 secured run in the following order, the figures 

 representing in each case the number and 

 percentage of professors who received the de- 

 gree from the home university : Cornell 32 

 out of 70, or 46 per cent. ; Columbia 32 out of 

 73, or 44 per cent.; Michigan 10 out of 25, 



or 40 per cent. ; Harvard 21 out of 55, or 

 38 per cent. ; Princeton 12 out of 33, or 36 

 per cent. ; Chicago 25 out of 86, or 29 per 

 cent. ; Wisconsin 13 out of 49, or 27 per cent. ; 

 California 4 out of 46, or 9 per cent. It is 

 only natural that universities like California, 

 "Wisconsin and Chicago should have a high 

 percentage of Ph.D.'s from elsewhere on their 

 faculties. 



The above figures also show that in the ac- 

 tual number of doctorates held by members of 

 the faculties the universities rank in the fol- 

 lowing order: Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, 

 Yale, Harvard, Wisconsin, California, Penn- 

 sylvania, Johns Hopkins, Princeton and Mich- 

 igan. Chicago also has the largest number 

 of Ph.D.'s from elsewhere, followed by Cali- 

 fornia, Columbia, Cornell, Wisconsin and 

 Harvard. 



The following imiversities in the order 

 named are represented by the largest number 

 of doctors of philosophy at the institutions 

 above enumerated, excluding in each case the 

 degrees granted by the same university : Johns 

 Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton 

 and Pennsylvania. Among foreign universi- 

 ties, Leipzig has by far the largest representa- 

 tion, having 37 doctors of philosophy on the 

 faculties of the universities under discussion, 

 as against 40 from Johns Hopkins. The other 

 universities represented by more than one 

 doctor follow in the order named : Gottingen, 

 Halle, Berlin and Munich (10 each), Freiburg, 

 Heidelberg, Strassburg, Jena and Rostock and 

 Wiirzburg (2 each). Complete returns were 

 not made by every institution, but the figures 

 are close enough to reflect existing conditions 

 with sufiicient accuracy. 



The statistics prove that most of the uni- 

 versities concerned attract to their faculties 

 a considerable percentage of holders of Ph.D. 

 degrees from other institutions, that Yale, 

 Johns Hopkins and Pennsylvania are the chief 

 exponents of ' inbreeding,' that the western 

 universities, as might be supposed, draw the 

 largest percentage of doctors from elsewhere, 

 that Johns Hopkins has the ^argest Ph.D. 

 representation of any American university. 



