12 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN SHIP CONSTRUCTION 
We inaugurated a discussion on engineering education with a view to getting suggestions 
from them as to what should be given in an engineering course. There were altogether 
some forty to fifty speakers, and each man had a suggestion for a particular course in his 
particular line of work, with the result, if we had included all the suggestions offered by 
our alumni, our course would have been a ten-year engineering course. 
I do not mention that in any critical sense, because we got some valuable suggestions , 
but there isa tendency, I think, after men have been out in practice for some time and 
have settled into a particular branch of their profession, or in a particular niche, or in a 
particular concern, to feel if they only had a course in that subject while in the university 
they would have got ahead so much quicker. Gentlemen, that is a fetish—an absolute 
fetish. (Applause.) 
You never can tell, or a student never can tell, in his four years’ course in the uni- 
versity, where he is going to land, and nine men out of ten land in a very different place 
from where they thought they would originally. 
The tendency today perhaps has been more towards the training of men for the execu- 
tive end. I think that is very important, but the pendulum is apt to swing too far in 
that direction. We would all like to train as presidents of companies. I think that 
would be an ideal job, but, unfortunately, probably 75 per cent or more of the men we 
turn out are going to be the rank and file of the profession, or reach fairly prominent 
positions, perhaps, so that although I think we ought to bring before students certain 
features of an executive character, I have a feeling we do not want to emphasize them too 
much. I am afraid that after a man has taken a course in business management, or a 
course of training for president of a company, he might be disappointed if on graduation 
he finds that the companies do not grab him up and make him a president of the company 
after he has been out of college three or four weeks. There is a tendency for the men to 
become discontented under those circumstances. 
We have adopted a course at Ann Arbor very similar to the Lehigh scheme, with this 
exception, that instead of laying down rather definite courses for a man to take we have 
a certain number of hours in the course which are left entirely optional—practically more 
than half his work in the senior year. A senior student is allowed to select work from 
any place all over the university. If his bent is towards the sales end of his profession, 
he can take a course which will help him in that. If his bent is in the managerial end, 
he can take some work in that. If he wishes to become a real engineer, he can take some 
more engineering, and we have a feeling if we have given a man a thoroughly good, broad, 
engineering training first, with the fundamentals of naval architecture and marine engi- 
neering, and then leave him free to elect, if he wishes, these other subjects, that we have 
come, as nearly as possible, to the education of a man for his future life. 
As I say, there are many differences of opinion as to how a man should be trained, but 
I think, fundamentally, we all have the same ideas. After all, the true purpose of the 
technical school and the university is to give a man the fundamentals of his profession, 
so that later on in life, when he gets to a position of authority, he is not afraid to tackle 
new problems. I think it is a mistake to overload a course too much in specialized 
subjects. 
Mr. Cuares F. Battey, Member of Council:—I think the Society is greatly in- 
debted to Professor Chapman for his paper and to the gentlemen who have preceded me 
for their discussion of it. 
