Education: For Professors

Everyone is sorry for professors; the idea is not a new one. It makes no student happy to see his learned and witty instructor pushing a baby-carriage because he cannot afford a nurse, wearing butter and eggs on his old vest because he cannot afford a new vest, slushing along without rubbers because he cannot afford a wife. Too bad; they ought to get more money. Editors have said it, bankers, statesmen, industrialists have said it; the country ought to raise their salaries. How much of a raise has generally been left vague, but not by one Frank Bohn, who wrote an article for the October Forum, “Professors Should Get $50,000 a Year.”

That universities can afford to pay this, Dr. Bohn maintains in good scholarly fashion by printing a list of some recent donations to institutions of the “higher” learning, and adding up the sum—$1,585,500,000. Said he:

“Pay one hundred professors a minimum salary of $30,000 a year and the entire profession will soon demand justice of the public …. They should receive from $30,000 to $50,000 annually. The tendency should be, unless the cost of living falls off sharply, to pay the higher sum generally. . . . This nation spends many hundreds of millions a year upon chewing gum and candy … a half-billion on military and naval aviation since the war. . . billions for pleasure automobiles. Our contention here is that it is not being used to the best advantage. . . .”

Were such salaries paid, many men of intellect now preoccupied with the details of business, law or war, could withdraw from active life and lend their minds, unharassed, to the service of human thought—men like Elihu Root, John Hay, Admiral Mahan, Steinmetz. Scholarship would come into its heritage; universities would be dignified. “Our typical ‘University’ of today would gradually find its place in the new system. Perhaps no great harm comes from assembling these vast crowds of healthy, noisy, young people. Let them enjoy themselves. But why miscall such a place of rendezvous a university?”