Abstract
A RECENT report of President Butler, of Columbia University, refers to the salaries paid to the professors and adjunct professors of the University. This part of the report was reprinted in Science for November 23. President Butler says that these salaries are inadequate, and that the effects of this inadequacy are deplorable. The report shows that the, present average salary paid to a Columbia University professor is but one-half of the sum fixed as necessary thirty years ago, and that the cost of living has meanwhile increased between to per cent. and 20 per cent. The purchasing power of the average salary of 1906 is, therefore, hardly more than 40 per cent. of the purchasing power of the salary established in 1876. In other words, the great expansion of the University, which has been brought about by the labours of the university teachers, has also been brought about at their expense. In President Butler's judgment the most important need of Columbia University at the present time is an addition to the endowment fund sufficient to enable the establishment and maintenance of a proper standard of compensation to members of the teaching staff. There are 119 professors and thirty-nine adjunct professors, 158 in all. To increase the salary of each by only 200l. on an average—not at all an adequate amount—would absorb the interest at 5 per cent. on a capital sum of more than 600,000l. The need is so imperative and the public interests affected by it are so important, the report states, that the mere statement of it ought to bring the needed sum, great though it is, from the American men and women who are the large-minded possessors of wealth.
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University and Educational Intelligence . Nature 75, 214 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/075214a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/075214a0