LTC: By TL, %age of population that aren't farmers?

[Pragmatic]

I know it depends a lot on how arable the farmland, but I was musing about what level of population it would take to form a decent college. You'd need the farmers and craftsmen, producing enough excess to allow a few hundreds to be idle (learning, not producing).

I was reading a Forgotten Realms wikia, and wiki-walking through colleges, and came across the Conclave of Silverymoon (a collection of colleges that combined to form a university). And it got me wondering.

Is there anywhere in the Low Tech Companions that talks about percentages of the population that were supported to be unproductive (i.e., specialists like soldiers, scholars, priesthood, and so on).

[ericthered]

Pyramid 52 has a section on urban carrying capacity. Its not exactly what you were asking for, but its pretty close: it tells you how many miles of land can support how many urbanites.



I haven't found anything specific on the exact ratios, and I suspect there are a lot of factors that change those ratios.

[edk926]

Some cities had Universities at lower tech levels such as Oxford University which has been around since at least the 12th century. I'm not sure what kind of population records they had back then, but figure that a large city in medieval and ancient times would have more than enough outside support in order to operate colleges.

[(E)]

There are some graphs here that might help

https://ourworldindata.org/employmen...-1300-to-today

I've got some other data that covers the efficiency of food production but it doesn't cover food preservation or transport so it's not too helpful here.

[AlexanderHowl]

It is combination of local climate, social organization, societal wealth, and technological level that determines the percentage of people who farm as their principle form of income. For example, Mongolians and Chinese both possessed TL3 technology in 1000 AD, but the Mongolians probably had a farming population no larger than 20% while the Chinese probably had a farming population of no less than 80%. In general though, the minimum population who is involved in agriculture is probably 90% at late-TL0 (Neoliyhic), reduced by 10% per full TL above 1 (26% of the global population in 2018 is involved in agriculture, so we are far above the minimum at late-TL8 of 10%).

The form a college, you probably need a minimum non-farming population of 100,000, which would give you an average of 2,000 people per year group if the average life expectancy was 50 years. If 1% of each year group was either born to college educated folk, attending college, or possessed a college education, that would give 20 students per year group, which is suitable for a small medieval college. You can probably increase the maximum population associated with college by 1% per TL above late-TL0 without breaking the economy (7% of the global population in 2018 possesses a college degree, so we are around the appropriate level for a late-TL8 society).

[Ji ji]

Nalanda (in Bihar) developed as a university-like institution since the 5th Century. It can be an interesting example.

[(E)]

A possibly relevant statistic, 2% ish of New Zealand's workforce from a total population of 4 million work in agriculture and produce food for about 40 million people.

[gruundehn]

Up to roughly the end of the18th and start of the 19th Centuries the population divide between rural (farmers) and urban (everyone else) was 9/1 or about 90% of the population lived on farms or farming villages. As farming techniques improved, this began to shift.


But, until then, improvements in farming techniques increased the yield of farms and reduced the number of famines so from probably the 9th Century or so, the population increased and the 10% grew in numbers enough to make a significant difference.


The more people who had time to study, the more this became a positive feedback loop. Until improvements in agricultural techniques reduced the percentage of the population required to feed the total population.

[hal]

It wasn't until the start of the 20th century that we see the ratio of rural to urban approach parity. By then, it was 5 farmers supported 5 non-farmers. Keep in mind that by then, canning methods of preserving food had taken hold, as well as long distance transport in the form of great lakes shipping and steam locomotives (American history wise that is) of foodstuffs from high production regions to less capable regions.

To answer the OP's original question - the answer seems to be that universities historically do no appear until the population reaches into the millions. But I also suspect that large scale education depends upon a NEED for specialists such as professors to become profitable. So, you need a class of people who are educated enough to support the super educated.

Put another way? City folks need support of rural folks. Cities need to reach a critical mass to support super specialists in universities. Then, making matters worse is this:

Just as a silversmith needs miners to supply him with silver, plus a farmer nine to support him, his no-brainer support also needs 9 families per theirs.

So, how many miners are required to support the smiths?

Same process would hold true for professors. Difference is? The professors need additional support such as carters, cooks, household chores staff, grounds maintenance staff, plus book creation staff, etc.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by hal

It wasn't until the start of the 20th century that we see the ratio of rural to urban approach parity.

As I recall, the UK reached parity in the early-mid 19th century, and the US didn't until between WWI and WWII.