Bismarck Daily Tribune

COST OF EDUCATION
Public attention should be called to the fact that the figures recently circulated in some of the state papers and intended to show the comparative cost of education per individual per annum in the different state institutions, are very likely to be incorrect and misleading. They must be so, if based, as would seem to be true, upon the plainly defective method of dividing the total cost to the state of running an institution for a given year by the total number of students enrolled during the year. To correct the method and to make the results fair, the attendance in the different institutions should be reduced to the same basis, that is, the question asked of each institution should not be "How many students are enrolled during the year in question?" but, "How many students should be in attendance for the full year, or any other length of time which could be made the same for all institutions, in order that the total attendance would be just the same as it is for the actual number of students enrolled, most of whom are in attendance for different lengths of time and some of whom are in attendance for only very short times, even as short as from one day to a week?" It is plain that the method of computation which seems to have been made use of to obtain the figures referred to, is very much to the advantage of these institutions who have many students enrolled in "short courses," which may not exceed even one week in length and as much to the disadvantage of other institutions which do not offer such short courses and which are not likely to have many students enrolled for less than a full year or a full term.
These figures which have been circulated by educational authorities are very likely based upon methods of computation for which a child in the grades would be considered a dullard and perhaps demoted. They are a fair sample of the half-baked and unscientific statistics used to sway public opinion and which is most likely to appear during a legislative session. Undoubtedly there should be statistics showing the cost of education per individual in the different state institutions, but such statistics when secured should be reliable because they are the result of careful investigation and computation.
It may be pointed out, in conclusion, that anybody who undertakes to determine the educational efficiency of an institution in terms of dollars and cents is almost sure to come out with a wrong result. It must certainly be true that in some institutions where the cost in dollars and cents of education per student is greater than in others, education may be the cheaper because it is the more efficient owing to better equipment, and especially to such things as superior qualifications of the faculty, methods of teaching, etc., which do not submit themselves to any methods of measurement. If there were more of inside and less of outside investigation and comparison of state institutions, we might know a good deal more about "where we at" than we do now.