650 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



our industries. However, in order to meet effectively the fields that 

 should be open to the graduates, we shall have to place the work on the 

 same basis of specialization as we have placed the work in silviculture 

 and management, and supply the schools with satisfactory equipment 

 both in the way of apparatus and instructors. 



Another important problem in forestry education is the standard of 

 graduate work. This likewise has left is mark on the standing of the 

 profession. The advantages of having the early work in forestry in 

 this country placed on the graduate basis is obvious. The newness of 

 the work and the necessity of exercising a good deal of judgment in the 

 early development of forestry called for men with maturer minds than 

 ordinarily found in persons with only an undergraduate training. We 

 must admit, however, that the work given was not of a graduate stand- 

 ard as measured in other technical schools of high standing, and that 

 even to this day the work has not as yet fully attained this standard. 

 It is particularly unfortunate that any school should thus far have 

 offered the doctor's degree in forestry. Much of the work in the grad- 

 uate schools is elementary in character when viewed from the graduate 

 standard, and the work of the graduate schools will not have attained 

 the real graduate standard until this elementary work is required for 

 entrance. This problem, too, is solving itself after a fashion; but the 

 process is slow, and unless greater effort is made to hasten it by the 

 educators themselves it will drag along for years. 



If we would place the graduate work on a high-class graduate basis, 

 we must demand for entrance a broad, general undergraduate course, 

 which will cover the necessary prerequisite sciences, languages, eco- 

 nomics, and such work in technical forestry as is now being conducted 

 satisfactorily in the undergraduate schools. Would it, for example, be 

 possible for any one without a fairly broad training in chemistry, bot- 

 any, economics, etc., to get into any of the graduate schools of high 

 standing without a thorough foundation in these subjects, or into 

 schools of law or medicine without pre-law or pre-medical courses? 

 Of course, there will always be some necessary overlapping between 

 the work of the two divisions ; but what we should strive for is a clear 

 demarcation between both the subject-matter and the grade of work in 

 the graduate and the undergraduate schools. This will mean that the 

 purely graduate forest schools shall have to depend upon the under- 

 graduate schools for their students. It will also mean that some of the 

 schools now offering graduate degrees will have to confine themselves 

 to the undergraduate class, because the higher classes of work will suc- 

 ceed in the long run only if they command expensive equipment and the 



