Notes

Abstract

WITH regard to the article on “University and Civil Service Salaries” published in our issue of August 25, the editor of the Civil Service Gazette has written to say that “the proportion of Civil Servants receiving above 500l. per annum is relatively very small, whereas the number of teachers receiving this amount all over the country is decidedly large.” The latter part of this statement, we may say, even if it were true, is quite beside the point. That a large number of teachers all over the country should receive more than 500l. per annum does not make the lot of a large number of university teachers who receive less than 500l. per annum any better or more endurable. It may be recalled that the article arose out of a letter (and subsequent correspondence) from the Provost of Worcester College to the Times of August 15. This letter stated, inter alia, that many Civil Servants receive double, and even treble, the salary that the greatest learning and distinction can obtain at Oxford, and this notwithstanding that, with few exceptions, Civil Servants of the highest class are men whose intellectual attainments, as tested in examinations, fall considerably short of the standard of a tutorial fellowship at Oxford. If, therefore, any comparison of emoluments is to be made, it should not be as between university teachers and the whole body of the Civil Service, but as between university teachers and Civil Servants of the highest class. When this is done we find, as stated in our article, that the emoluments of universitv teachers fall considerably below those of this class, and we mentioned the modest 800l. a year of a tutorial fellow of Oxford, and referred to the fact that the permanent heads of Government Departments after September 1 will receive “only” 3000l. a year—as one of the Times correspondents quaintly puts it. Whether Civil Servants of the highest class are overpaid or not is a question which we did not discuss. But we had no hesitation whatever in asserting that, in view of such salaries, University teachers—who are public servants no less than the Civil Service—are grossly and unfairly underpaid.