Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/431

Rh intelligently, the starting point must be comprehensive statistics showing exactly what the situation is. To get such statistics is not an easy task. Though most institutions of learning have published reports giving details of their business management, these reports are not always easy to find, and, when found, certain kinds of information are not always easy to obtain from their pages. In taking up the matter, the authors saw that with the time at their disposal only a limited number of institutions could be studied. In selecting this small number, it seemed desirable to take a representative group of some well denned type so that the figures would have wider application. In choosing the type the state university of the Middle West was selected, for the reason that in this large section of the country it is the most important type, not in numbers, for in this particular the small denominational college outranks it thirty to one, but in wealth, number of students and rapid rate of growth.

The actual group of which a discussion is to be found in the following pages consists of the universities of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Effort was also made to secure similar data from the universities of Iowa and Michigan, but without success.

These eight universities may certainly be looked upon as representative. They have shared in the development of the region in which they lie. The equipment, the attendance and the number of instructors have increased to a remarkable extent, and, finally, there is in them an almost entire absence of traditions of the past. In such institutions, if anywhere, one would expect to find the normal salary and the normal rate of change of salary. That is, the increase in the incomes of these schools, as well as other conditions of a secondary influence, has been such that a greater or less increase in the salaries paid has been largely a matter of policy, to be followed or not as their various boards of trustees have seen fit; and it is therefore reasonable to suppose that whatever state of affairs in regard to salaries exists in these institutions more nearly represents the rating of the positions on the part of the people than can be found in other universities and colleges.

In the following pages then will be found an account of the salaries paid at these eight institutions. No discussion of the conditions prevailing at the several schools will in any sense be attempted. The data as obtained from the published, or soon to be published, reports are given and the important items are pointed out by references in the text. Whatever local conditions may exist for explaining this or that peculiarity are beyond the scope of the paper, which aims solely at a presentation of the facts in this group of representative institutions, the authors believing that such a presentation should be preliminary to any change that may come.