TECHNICAL SCHOOLS 253 



THE INFLUENCE OF TECHNICAL SCHOOLS 



By Professor JOHN J. STEVENSON 



NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 



THE increasing strength and efficiency of our applied science schools 

 presages a period of industrial prosperity, marked not only by 

 pecuniary profit to merchants and manufacturers, but also by the con- 

 stantly improving condition of wage earners. But there are those to 

 whom this prospect brings no comfort, for they see in it the foreshadow- 

 ing of a period marked by decay of philanthropy and lack of piety, 

 when a materialistic spirit will bring about a selfish individuality 

 destructive of all that is good in society ; they see its baneful influence 

 already here, for young men avoid the college courses and rush into 

 applied science to reach money-making as soon as possible ; while not a 

 few of them denounce the modernized curriculum in colleges as the 

 disturbing cause and plead for restoration of classical studies to their 

 former preeminent place as an all-important means of defense against 

 the approaching calamity. 



Those who have struggled to free the curriculum from medieval 

 shackles would have no cause for mortification if they were responsible 

 for the increasing attendance at schools of applied science; unhappily, 

 they can lay no claim to the credit, since the matter in no wise con- 

 cerns the contests between classicists and anti-classicists. Existing 

 confusion respecting this matter is due largely to gradual development 

 of the technical school within the college. Even now in the smaller 

 colleges, applied science courses are parallel with those in pure science 

 and in literature; students in all alike meet in many classes, assemble 

 in the same chapel, mingle on the same campus; graduates in applied 

 science receive the degree of bachelor in science as do college students 

 taking pure science, and think of themselves and their fellow students 

 think of them as having graduated from college. The confusion 

 would have been less pronounced had there been a proper difference 

 in degrees. 



For, be it understood, the college and the applied science school are 

 wholly different in character and purpose. The latter is a professional 

 school, and its graduate has never been " at college," though he may 

 have received a superior intellectual training and may have become in 

 many ways a stronger, broader man than his friend of equal ability, who 

 has B.S. or A.B. from some college with a narrow group or wide elective 

 system. The applied science school is professional as are schools of 



