President's Address. 27 



ber of those choosing to enter the field of chemistry as applied to 

 manufactures. This is a field that is promising as well as relatively 

 new, and one that is not by any means fully occupied at the pres- 

 ent. The increase shown by civil engineering seems somewhat 

 abnormally large, although one looks naturally for that course to 

 to show more growth in the last few years because of the wide- 

 spread activity in public enterprises using the services of a civil 

 engineer, and because the civil engineer graduate, from the less 

 highly specialized nature of his college training, finds more possi- 

 ble openings before him and those of a greater variety and range 

 than the graduate of other courses. In this the mining graduate 

 is closely allied to the civil, though the recent increase in the num- 

 bers of those choosing mining is undoubtedly due to the revival in 

 mining operations. The relatively low increase in the number of 

 mechanical students is probably due to the popularity of electrical 

 engineering, which, because of this popularity, due to its almost 

 wizard-like accomplishments, has perhaps drawn unduly from its 

 closely related course, that of mechanical engineering. Electrical 

 engineering in reality is a branch of mechanical engineering, and 

 it is a question not yet settled how far the two courses should be 

 differentiated. 



It is probably true that some of our courses in applied electricity 

 in our colleges are too highly specialized along electrical lines and 

 include too little of subjects found in mechanical courses to obtain 

 the best training for all-round engineering work. 



The falling out of students as they progress from year to year is 

 also an interesting point. In the year 1901-02, of the 14,913 

 students of technical courses in American colleges, only 1485 are 

 classed as seniors. This is 9.9 per cent. For the college year 

 1905-06, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology catalogued 

 16.5 per cent, of its total number of engineering and architectural 

 students as seniors; for the last year, Cornell University, 15.8 per 

 cent.; Ohio State University, 9.3 per cent.; Purdue University 

 17.3 per cent.; University of Michigan, 10.2 per cent.; University 

 of Wisconsin, 14.7 per cent.; University of Illinois, 13.4 per cent.; 

 Iowa State College, 15.1 per cent.; University of Kansas, 9 per 

 cent. There are various reasons for this. The courses cover more 

 ground and are made up largely of stiff er and harder work than is 

 found in the ordinary college course, especially if the latter is one 

 allowing of a wide range of electives; the engineering courses are 

 more exacting then on a student's time and effort and many get 

 weeded out early. Many students start with engineering under 

 a notion that it is a good thing for them because it leads to good 



