Training Research Chemists. 279 
never conferred the degree of Doctor of Philosophy or any other doctorate, 
excepting an honorary degree on two or three occasions. It is recognized 
that the existing limitations in available funds makes it difficult to provide 
instructional staff, buildings and equipment to meet the needs of the ever 
growing undergraduate departments and that it would be impossible, under 
the circumstances, to conduct a creditable graduate school which would 
attract any considerable number of students. As a result we have available 
for experimental research, practically no one except graduate assistants 
who are proceeding to the Master’s degree. 
At our sister institution (Indiana University) a graduate organization is 
maintained but examination of most of the catalogues for a dozen years 
back fails to show that any one has ever received the degree of Doctor of 
Philosophy, with major work in chemistry, from that institution. I have 
not discussed this matter with any member of the chemical faculty of 
Indiana University but I have an idea that their story would be about the 
same as ours,—that they are unable to provide adequate facilities for the 
administration of high grade graduate work in chemistry and so choose to 
devote their energies to undergraduate training. 
The State is losing, incalculably, as a result of this policy. Compared 
with the important universities of other states, our state colleges are ac- 
complishing a painfully small amount of chemical research. The time and 
energies of our professors are consumed in routine teaching of large classes 
of undergraduates. Even at that, many of our more ambitious professors 
could and would be productive researchers if they could have a reasonable 
number of graduate students available for doing the experimental work of 
research problems under their personal direction. Every one who is at all 
informed on this subject knows that the great mass of university research 
work of today is done in this manner. The directing professor, through his 
extensive knowledge and experience, originates the basic idea and plans the 
research, in the main. The graduate student carries out these plans in the 
experimental laboratory, makes observations and obtains necessary data. 
Also, if he is the right sort and has the ‘“‘stuff’ in him, he catches the in- 
spiration of his teacher and, through intimate contact and numerous dis- 
cussions, learns his methods of reasoning, of planning investigations and 
of arriving at conclusions. 
As a State we therefore lose, also, the opportunity to send forth into 
useful service a body of young men and women, trained in the methods and 
inspired with the purposes of scientific research. Our chemical graduates 
are a splendid asset to the State and to the nation but their work, for the 
most part, lies elsewhere than in the lines of research. 
It is my personal belief that Indiana has not yet awakened to the needs 
of higher education. We deal in a niggardly fashion with the only institu- 
tions that we have legally provided for keeping the lamp of education 
burning. I have been reliably informed that the President of the Uni- 
versity of Michigan is asking his state, this year, to furnish over eight 
million dollars, merely to provide for immediate and pressing needs, and 
that there is every prospect that this money will be given. What might 
out two State universities do with half, or even one quarter of this amount? 
I should like to close this brief discussion by stating it as my firm con- 
viction that, do what we will or try what plan we may, Indiana will never 
