University of Virginia Library

ALLEGED EXTRAVAGANT INCOMES OF THE PROFESSORS.

Among the complaints made against the University, we sometimes
hear it urged that the incomes of the professors are extravagantly
large, and that a regard to republican moderation, as well
as a cheapening of the expenses of instruction, require them to be
reduced. In the last four sessions, including the one now in progress,
the average income of all the professors has been very nearly
as follows:

       

In the session of 1841-42,	$2,300
In the session of 1842-43,	2,250
In the session of 1843-44,	2,150
In the session of 1844-45,	2,350

It thus appears that the average for the whole period of four
sessions, may be set down at twenty-three hundred dollars for each
professor. That this sum exceeds the income of the professors in
a number of our literary institutions, is undoubtedly true. But it
is equally certain that it does not surpass, and in many instances
falls short of that of the teachers generally in seminaries of distinguished
literary rank. Thus the receipts of those professors who
are steadily employed in a full course of duty in Cambridge, in
Columbia College, New York, at West Point, in the collegiate department
of the University of Pennsylvania, of several of those in
Princeton, in the University of South Carolina, and several other
institutions in the Southern States, are as great, and in many instances
greater, than are received by the professors of our University.
And it should be borne in mind, that the comparative cheapness
of the means of living, and of the prevailing habits of society,
has the effect of bringing the smaller emoluments of the teachers
in many of the New England and Western colleges more nearly
to an equality with the receipts of those elsewhere who are more
liberally paid.

It should also be remarked that in many of our institutions the
numerous tutors who share the inferior duties of the professors, and
thus greatly lighten their toils, divide the emoluments of the department,
and thus very properly reduce the incomes of the principal
instructors in a ratio somewhat corresponding to the diminution of
their labours. At our University, on the contrary, the tasks of
tutor and professor fall upon the same individual, and those who
are familiar with the daily routine of instruction, especially in some
of its schools, well know the unceasing drudgery it involves. Comparing
the emoluments at Cambridge and most other prominent

institutions with those at the University, as bestowed upon each
leading department or school, it will be found that, for the amount
of laborious teaching they perform, the professors at the University
are less liberally rewarded than their brethren at any of the institutions
in view. In a word, the full circle of instruction in any one
school or department, is really obtained at much less cost at the
University than by their complex system it can be with them.

But we turn to another view of the question, comporting, we
think, better with right conceptions of the high interest it involves.
The qualifications which fit a professor for the duties of any chair
at a distinguished seat of science and letters are such as are won
only by long years of studious labour, and of abstinence from the
pleasing relaxations of society. They are the mingled fruits of
genius and perseverance, matured often at the cost of health, and
generally by the sacrifice of many a plan of easy self-advancement.
They are the gathered treasures wrought with anxious toil from
amid the deep labyrinths of thought, to be sent abroad with the
impress of truth, as a precious part of the intellectual currency of
the world.

Are qualifications thus rare, difficult of attainment, and valuable
in application, to be estimated as but of little price? Compared
with the easy training which prepares men for the ordinary vocations
of life, they are surely worthy of at least an equal remuneration.
Besides, we should remember the toil and confinement of the
professor, as well in his closet as in the presence of his class, in
forming our estimate of the value of his services. Yet, with all
his hard-earned acquirements in science and letters, and his daily
exhausting labours of instruction and discipline, his emoluments at
the University, thus alleged to be extravagant, will scarcely vie
with those of the middle class of lawyers, physicians, and merchants
in any of the thriving communities of our country.

The cultivators of letters and science, eminently social in their
activity, and especially so in modern times, naturally seek the incentives
and rewards of their efforts in the wide circle of emulous
spirits gathered in the larger cities. Nor can we expect that small
pecuniary inducements will suffice to tempt the really worthy of
their number to exchange such congenial scenes for the isolation
of a professor's chair, even though it be one in our honoured University.
Even the more liberal compensation formerly given has
proved, as is well known, insufficient in some instances to secure
the services of distinguished scholars invited to its halls, and has
not prevented the resignation of many professors who had for a
time filled its stations with undenied success. To stint their emoluments
then would be at once to exclude from its chairs the commanding
abilities and attainments necessary to accomplish the
high ends for which it was established, to paralyze the living spirit
of its organization, and to degrade this noble institution into a
cumbrous machine for class-book recitations and superficial, though
it might be plausible, academic routine.