!08 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MOXTHLY 



THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY AXD THE 

 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE 



OF TECHNOLOGY 

 Boston is still the chief educational 

 center of the country. Among its in- 

 stitutions for higher education, Har- 

 vard is our greatest university and the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

 our greatest school of technology. This 

 year Harvard is for the first time sur- 

 passed by Columbia in the number of 

 students, and it will soon be overtaken 

 by several of the state universities. 

 Cornell and Michigan have more stu- 

 dents in applied science than the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology. But 

 Harvard and the institute have been 

 leaders in setting certain educational 

 ideals, and each will for a long time 

 maintain its preeminence. Harvard 

 consists of a college with free electives 

 for culture and professional schools 

 based on it; whereas the institute aims 



: to give culture with and through its 

 professional studies. The outcome ap- 

 pears to be more play at Harvard and 



I more work at the institute. It is ex- 

 tremely difficult to appraise the value 

 of an educational system by its results 

 on the students. So long as students 

 of the upper classes with their hered- 

 itary and social advantages or students 



i selected from all classes by their su- 



: perior ability and enterprise go to col- 

 lege, and so long as the college is the 



' natural gatewaj^ to certain careers, it 

 is not possible to test the value of a 

 college education by its objective re- 

 sults on the future success of the 

 students. When, however, the graduate 

 school of applied science endowed with 



I the income of the McKay bequest at 

 Harvard has been completely estab- 

 lished, it may be possible to make an 

 interesting comparison of its work with 

 that of the institute. 



The President's House, Harvard University. 



