Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/429

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ROM time to time the question of the relatively low pay of members of the teaching profession is brought to the foreground in the public press. The statements made are as a rule only general in character, or if any actual figures are given for a large group of teachers they usually relate to those in the public schools. It has happened, however, that during the last half year certain comments have been made on the remuneration of college and university professors. Sir William Ramsay, the eminent English chemist, remarked during a recent visit to this country on the absence here of any great academic prizes, positions of high standing and large salary together with leisure for carrying on research. An article in the New York Evening Post of recent date has also been widely quoted. This purports to give a brief account of the salaries paid at Harvard. From it one learns that, roughly speaking, the average salary of a professor there is $4,000, of an associate professor $3,000, of an assistant professor $2,000, of an instructor $1,000, while an assistant must content himself with from $250 to $400. The Post intimates that the situation at Harvard is better than at any other American university. Whatever may be the real state of affairs, these figures may certainly be looked upon as being among the highest. Indeed, to anticipate one of the chief items in the statistical part of this paper, it may be said that the average salary of the professors in the state universities of the middle west is $2,315. This, whether it be too low or not, is certainly lower than $4,000.

The question at Harvard is receiving its full share of attention, for it has been noted in a recent number of Science that $1,800,000 of a fund of $2,500,000 has been raised to be devoted 'to increase the present totally inadequate amount available for the salaries of the teaching staff.' The Carnegie pension fund is another item of interest in the matter. In The Popular Science Monthly of December, 1904, an article under the title 'Status of the American College Professor' has much to say of the financial side, and in the Atlantic Monthly for May of this year an anonymous writer discusses in detail the necessary expenses of a college professor. These exceedingly pithy articles will be found to have an added interest in the light of the statistics brought out in this paper.

But if this question of university salaries is to be discussed at all