RELATIONS OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 601 



power: elementary economics and transportation problems; element- 

 ary law and contracts; with a great deal more English composition 

 and theme-writing. 



The student will say that his father will not give him five years 

 at the university. How about his brothers and friends who study 

 law or medicine? We have only to get used to the idea. I believe 

 the five-year course will come within the next five years. 



In this same connection is another point. An engineer's success 

 is increasingly dependent on his ability to meet men of refinement 

 and culture on their own plane. Obviously there is no time in a 

 technical course for culture studies. For fifteen or more years there 

 has been a tendency for a few men who have completed an arts 

 course to take two or more years in engineering. This is a tendency 

 to be encouraged, for it makes for increased power and efficiency 

 in engineering. We ought to get into the habit of thinking of the 

 technical school as a professional school to be entered only on the 

 completion of the broader general course. 



There is another criticism which has come to me many times from 

 men in different grades of practice. The technical schools are or- 

 ganized so that a young man who has passed regularly through the 

 public-school system finds entrance easy; while maturer men whose 

 schooling has been irregular, but who have had several years of 

 practical work in lines connected with engineering, find entrance 

 difficult. Yet the latter class are apt to have greater capacity for 

 becoming engineers. It seems certainly necessary to require that all 

 candidates shall have the mathematical preparation. It is impossi- 

 ble to build without a foundation. But any earnest man with 

 engineering capacity can get this preparation. It is other subjects 

 that give trouble. If a man has spent several years in a shop or 

 drafting-room, or at some other work directly connected with 

 engineering, h'e certainly has increased his understanding of what 

 engineering training should be; he has usually very much greater 

 earnestness for study than the young man from the high school. In 

 other words his work has been effective preparation for a technical 

 course. There should not be any difficulty in giving value to such 

 work toward entrance. 



This problem may be solved as follows: Make the mathematical 

 and English requirements rigid. Let the other requirements stand 

 as at present, but add to them shop-work, drawing, and such other 

 subjects as may be judged to give equivalent training. Let a cer- 

 tain number of these subjects be required with free election. This 

 plan is now in successful operation at Stanford University. 



Some desirable men (I have known many of this class) might 

 still be unable to enter. If they can offer the required mathematics, 

 they may be admitted as special students. This would bar them 



