ACADEMIC EFFICIENCY 487 



SOME TESTS OF ACADEMIC EFFICIENCY 1 



By RICHARD C. MACLATJRIN, LL.D., Sc.D. 



PRESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 



I HAVE come here from Boston for the simple purpose of mani- 

 festing the good will of an eastern institution to this vigorous 

 university in the middle west. I need not remind you of the historical 

 connection between Massachusetts and Kansas, but I should like to 

 express the hope that frequent interchange of academic courtesies may 

 at any rate keep alive the memories of that interesting connection. 

 My mission here, however, is extremely simple and my duty entirely 

 congenial. It is merely to congratulate 3 r ou on this new exhibition 

 of western energy and to join with you most heartily in the dedication 

 of your splendid laboratories to the great purpose for which they were 

 designed, the pursuit of science and its application to the problems 

 of to-day. 



I need not assure you that I have come here in no spirit of eastern 

 superiority. In fact, if there is anything of east and west in my mind 

 at all it is the old suggestion that the wise men of the east displayed 

 their wisdom in going to the west for inspiration. I believe that this 

 might well be done more frequently to-day. 



But what impresses me most in a visit such as this is not so much 

 the difference between the east and west, not so much the distinction 

 as the points of similarity. The old distinctions seem to be rapidly 

 disappearing and all are recognizing that the prosperity of one part of 

 the country is intimately bound up with the prosperity of every other 

 part. And there is no field of our national activity in which this is 

 more clearly recognized than in the field of education. There have 

 been differences, there have been jealousies, there have been rivalries 

 between different colleges and technical schools. There are some of 

 these differences and rivalries still left, but never before was there a 

 time when the essential solidarity of the whole educational world was 

 more clearly recognized, and when men saw so well as they do to-day 

 that in all of our colleges, universities and technical schools we are 

 fighting, if we are fighting at all, on the same side. Bivalries in some 

 sense there must needs be, but no longer do we desire weak rivals. "We 

 want our rivals to be strong and we want them strong so that in the 

 process of emulation and of competition we may be all forced to higher 

 levels and there may be a general trend upwards rather than downwards. 



1 An address delivered at the dedication of the engineering laboratories of 

 the University of Kansas, February 25, 1910. 



