No. 4.] INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 29 



shorter time, three years, for instance, be accepted in other 

 institutions conferrino; the same deirree and having; the same 

 requirements for admission. President Eliot suggests that 

 three 3"ears ought to be enough ; but this is entirely a 

 question as to the starting-point. With a preparation 

 covering a year's work more than is covered commonly by 

 applicants for admission, the college course might be re- 

 duced to three years' time ; but with preparation under the 

 ordinary standards of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and 

 the other States of New England, it will take four years to 

 produce the development of mind without which there ought 

 to be no degree conferred, of A.B. or B.S. This does not 

 mean, necessarily, that there must not be shorter courses, 

 requiring less and giving less. But the degree should be 

 the same for equivalent attainment in all institutions. In 

 the department of agriculture, it may be possible that a 

 course of two years would appeal to many young men to 

 whom a course of four years would seem like an impossibility. 

 On the other hand, however, is the danger that a course of 

 but two years, with a certificate, of course, not a degree, at 

 the end of it, would tend to lower the standard of the insti- 

 tution, and thus indirecth^ defraud every graduate who has 

 pursued the full course and thus become entitled to standing 

 as a bachelor of arts. A short course in agriculture is an 

 acknowledgment of the truth of which I have spoken, —that 

 in teaching agriculture there is no determined form of pro- 

 gressive sequence. It may also be a confession that the 

 graduate in agriculture is not to be considered equal with 

 the graduate in other departments. So far as this is the 

 meaning of it, the short course is to be unqualifiedly con- 

 demned. In any case the question of preliminary require- 

 ments is involved. For the candidate for the short course is 

 almost inevitably one who is not prepared for the full course ; 

 one, in other words, who belongs in a preparatory school, 

 not in a college. The decree of A.B. should l)c oiven, after 

 satisfactory completion of the determined number of years' 

 work, but with a definite preparation assumed in every case. 

 What should the preparation be? 



This is the practical difiiculty in the way of industrial edu- 

 cation. And it is to the honor of the Massachusetts Agri- 



