28 Kansas Academy of Science. 



salaries, only to find that they are not adapted to that kind of work. 

 Then the knowledge and training received in the years below 

 senior, in times of great prosperity like this, become of money 

 value, and many students from choice or necessity become wage- 

 earners, or even engineers with limitations. This point operates 

 strongly in Kansas. Another thing that influences the above per- 

 centages is the very recent rapid growth in numbers, which, of 

 course, swells the ranks of the freshmen chiefly. Yet it is inter- 

 esting to note that of the entire number of 118,000 students of col- 

 legiate grade in 1903-04, only about 15,500 were given degrees at 

 the end of the year. This is very close to 13 per cent., a figure which 

 therefore can fairly be taken as an average for the whole country. 

 There will come a time when more normal conditions will govern 

 and the ratio of seniors to total number somewhat larger than 

 above given. A strong influence in this direction is the growing 

 tendency on the part of railways and manufacturing concerns to re- 

 quire graduation from a good technical school of those seeking 

 engineering employment. 



In the true professional schools (for the engineering school is 

 not a professional school in any strict sense), the percentage of 

 graduates to total enrolment is considerably higher, being 23 per 

 cent, for law, 21 per cent, for medicine, 30 per cent, for dentistry, 

 and 29 per cent, for pharmacy. The reasons for this probably are 

 that those entering these professional courses are either more ma- 

 ture or more definitely settled in their choice than those entering 

 college or a technical school. Moreover, the standards of work 

 maintained by some professional schools have not heretofore been 

 as high as those of the colleges, although there seems to be a gen- 

 eral advance in this respect. 



There is another point of interest to be touched upon growing 

 out of this statistical study. The United States census for 1900 

 gives the number of engineers and architects in active practice, as 

 follows : 



Civil engineers 20, 153 



Surveyors 6,034 



Mechanical and electrical engineers 14,440 



Mining engineers 2,904 



Chemists, assay ers, and metallurgists 8,887 



Architects 10.604 



Designers, draftsmen, and inventors 18,956 



Total 81,978 



But, as the surveyors are rarely men of college training, as many 

 chemists and most architects are not technically trained, and as the 



