Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/555

Rh exceed women in time spent in laboratories; women exceed men in time spent in lectures and outside study (with the reservation as to Sunday study just noted). Even so, the men in the College of Arts and Sciences, who give less time to university work than the men of any other college, give more time than the women of the college. In other words, the women at Cornell give the least time of any group to university work. Those who fear lest women are overdoing in their attempt to work with men in a coeducational institution may find some comfort in these figures.

With regard to the remaining items, we find that, whether we compare the women in arts with the men in arts or the women with the men in the university at large, women spend less time than men in amusement, in physical exercise, in sleep and in self support, but spend more time at meals and over an hour a day more in the miscellaneous activities recorded as unclassified.

Our general result, then, is that women give less time than men to university work, to amusement, to physical exercise, to sleep and to self-support; they give more time to meals and unclassified pursuits.

The Final Average.—In Table 5 will be found the final averageday of all students taken collectively. For the purpose of discussing the relative uniformity of the figures for the various items this average is supplemented by two further groups of figures. The last two columns indicate the extreme individual variations found in the entire student body (reduced to a 24-hour basis). The second and third columns express what we have ventured to term the 'mean group variation.' This was computed by comparing the average of each of the 39 groups comprised in the first series of tables with the final average of the present table. Thus the averages for the four classes in arts, the three classes in law, etc., vary from the final average by a mean of three quarters of an hour in absolute time (second column), which is equivalent approximately to a variation of 21 per cent, (third column).

Let us first consider the relation of the final average to the amounts recommended by the authorities mentioned in our introduction, and then take up the various items for further consideration in the light of the variations and extremes.

By a curious chance, the period of university work for the average Cornell student is exactly nine hours, or precisely the time advocated by President Eliot. Even if we add the time given to self-support (0.39) the time given to work (in the wider use of the term) is not materially modified. Only if all the unclassified time is assumed to be of the general nature of work—an assumption entirely unwarranted—can we obtain anything like the eleven hours advocated by President Schurman.