The Relation of Universities to 

 Technical and Professional Education 



THE subject which I have the honour to bring before this 

 meeting raises certain large and fundamental questions of 

 university polity, which have been agitating many minds and 

 which deserve serious consideration, and I think it will be 

 more useful if, instead of attempting to give historical or 

 statistical information, I direct the attention of the Congress to 

 the broad considerations which affect the relation of universities 

 to what is now commonly understood as technical and pro- 

 fessional education. 



In outline, the situation may be described in the following 

 way. Professions and business vocations are more and more 

 becoming learned callings, each developing a special body of 

 knowledge, which requires for its full mastery and effective use, 

 an intellectual training of what may be called the university 

 standard. The special training so required is, for what are known 

 as the learned professions and for some other callings, already 

 provided in universities. In the case of law, medicine, and 

 theology it has been provided from the earliest days of uni- 

 versities ; in engineering and agriculture it is comparatively 

 new : in commerce and chemical technologies it is hardly of 

 yesterday. 



Outside the universities, the training and the intellectual 

 standards, which are deemed essential for certain callings, are 

 often regulated by associations of people representing the 

 particular interest concerned. This is, of course, still partly 

 the case with medicine, law, and theology. Associations of 



