i8 



NATURE 



\ May 7, 1903 



Showing Numbers of Students in Engineering in Certain 

 Colleges. 



The staff consists of thirty-six teachers and instructors, 

 and this number includes six professors and four assistant 

 professors, and eight non-resident lecturers. The staff is 

 inadequate at the present to deal with the numbers of 

 students in the college. 



A great feature of this institution is its workshops. Here 

 instruction is given in pattern-making, moulding, forging, 

 fitting and turning, and the work done in them is real. All 

 students in the college pass through the same course during 

 the first three years. They may specialise in the fourth year 

 in steam, marine, railway or electrical engineering with 

 specialists in those subjects. 



Admission to the course in the American college is by 

 examination. To enter Cornell a student must be sixteen 

 years of age, and to enter the Massachusetts Institute seven- 

 teen. The standard of examination is such that a youth 

 from a good high school can pass. There is no freedom 

 left to the student regarding his course of studies when 

 once he has chosen his department. Examinations are 

 frequent, and promotion from one year to another depends 

 upon the result of them. The courses are really a carefully- 

 thought-out and elaborately organised species of educational 

 drill. As a general rule a man must go through with it or 

 fall out. 



At the Massachusetts Institute the courses are so arranged 

 that a student can do his work in forty-eight hours per week. 

 Half of this time is given to lectures, &c., at the college, 

 the other half is assumed to be spent in private study. 

 The same method appears to be in operation at Cornell, 

 Harvard and Yale. An analysis of the courses shows what 

 is understood by a technical education in the States ; it is 

 really four years of continuous hard work at a college 

 equipped with engineering laboratories and workshops, and 

 with all the educational apparatus for giving a scientific 

 education. 



It is interesting to note the attitude of employers in the 

 United States to the men who study in the way just de- 

 scribed in these American colleges. A point in which 

 American practice is remarkablv different from ours is that 

 age is no limit to a man who wants to get practical work in 

 the shops, providing he is a college graduate. Employers 

 i^ight not take on an annrentice after tvventv-one year's of 

 age if he were not a graduate. College ' graduates in 

 America never find that, whilst learning the scientific prin- 

 ciples of their profession, thev have grown too old to enter 

 the workshops to learn the practical part. The general 

 opinion seems to be that the educated man picks up his 

 practice much quicker and more intelligently than the 

 younger man with only an ordinary education. Generally 

 speakmg, the attitude of the American employer towards 

 these graduates is one of distinct encouragement, and of 

 advantage to both. The employer gets the advantage of a 

 trained intellect, the employee gets the advantage of his 

 employer's shops and business experience. The American 

 employer keeps an " open door " for the technically trained 

 man, whilst with us in England the door is too often closed 

 by rules regarding age and the like, and the would-be 

 apprentice not having sufficient means to pav a premium 

 in addition to the amount he has already paid for his educa- 

 tion. In cases where college graduates are taken on in 

 England, they are, as a rule, expected to go through the 

 .'.^.^ ^..,,.o„ :„ ^u„ shops as a bcv entering straic^ht fro- 



tame course 



thf 



school. The Americans are more yielding in this respet t 

 and do not insist upon the drudgery of the first few years. 



Germany. — The Berlin Technical High School at Char- 

 lottenburg is a State institution, and its object is to give 

 a specialised training in industrial subjects founded on a 

 preliminary scientific education. The course, lasting four 

 years, begins with scientific subjects, and gradually be- 

 comes more technical until in the fourth year all the sub- 

 jects are specialised. German subjects are admitted to the 

 school on the production of a " maturity certificate " from 

 a German gymnasium or a Prussian real-gymnasium. The 

 education given at the two kinds of schools corresponds 

 very roughly with that given in the classical and modern 

 courses of our public schools. The maturity certificate is 

 obtained at the end of a nine years' course. Those ad- 

 mitted by means of this certificate are styled Students. 



Persons who cannot obtain or have not obtained this 

 certificate can be admitted on school certificates of a lower 

 value, but for the departments of architecture, civil and 

 mechanical engineering and naval architecture must in 

 addition show that they have worked for at least one year 

 in some works. Those entering in this way are styled 

 Hospitanten. The school has recently been given the status 

 of a university. 



As an instructive indication of the importance attached 

 to higher technical education in Germany, the tables which 

 have been drawn up by Prof. Dalby showing the numbers 

 of students and teachers at the Charlottenburg institution 

 may be given : — ' 



Students of Various Grades in Attendance for the Winter 

 Half -Year, 1902-3. 



NO. 1749. VOL. 



68] 



