720 
NATURE 
[AuGusT 26, 1915 


THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION FOR THE 
ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING. 
gee ninth annual report of the president and the 
treasurer of the Carnegie Foundation for the 
Advancement of Teaching, for the year ending Septem- 
ber 30, 1914, shows a total endowment of 2,850,000l., 
a surplus of 249,o00l., an annual income of 149,200l., 
and an annual expenditure of 143,200l. Of this 6400l. 
Was spent in administration, 9400]. in educational in- 
quiry, and 126,800l. in retiring allowances and pen- 
sions. During the year twenty-nine retiring allow- 
ances and fifteen widows’ pensions were granted, the 
average grant being 329]. 1os. The total number of 
allowances now in force is 332, the total number of 
widows’ pensions 100, the general average grant being 
319l. The total number of allowances granted since 
the beginning of the foundation is 595, the total expen- 
diture for this purpose being 710,2o00l. 
A comprehensive study of engineering education has 
been undertaken at the request of a joint committee 
representing the six national engineering societies. In 
co-operation with these societies a study of the history 
of important engineering schools and land-grant col- 
leges has been made. Numerous engineering schools 
have been visited, special studies are being made of 
the situation of the student upon entering and upon 
leaving his engineering studies, and several thousand 
engineers are co-operating in formulating the views 
of the profession concerning the present methods and 
results of the engineering schools. 
Because engineering is relatively a new profession, 
its professional consciousness is not as well developed 
as that in medicine and law, as is evidenced by the 
fact that engineering societies are of comparatively 
recent date. Thus the American Society of Civil 
Engineers, organised in 1852, held its first convention 
in 1869. The similar organisations of the mechanical 
and the electrical engineers were formed in 1880 and 
1884 respectively. 
Because of this mewness of the demand for 
engineers, the engineering schools of the United States 
have had to do much pioneer work in education. 
Founded, as most of them were, since 1860, in re- 
sponse to the needs of growing industries for men 
trained in applied science, they have had to blaze their 
own trail through the forests of educational tradition ; 
and, particularly in the early years of their existence, 
have had to defend their practices against existing 
habits of educational procedure. This fact makes the 
study of engineering education one of particular in- 
terest and importance, since it inevitably led to modi- 
fications in school practices both in the engineering 
colleges themselves and in the colleges for liberal 
humanistic training. 
Although engineering was much simpler when the 
colleges were established than it is now, the founders of 
these institutions recognised clearly the novelty of the 
demands they were trying to meet, and organised their 
schools with a definite purpose of meeting those de- 
mands as fully as possible. The curricula of the early 
schools were devised only after a careful study of the 
conditions which the young engineer would have to 
meet on emerging from his course. That these curri- 
cula and the methods of training used were well 
adapted to the purposes for which they were devised 
is shown by the admirable results obtained. The 
wonderful development of the country in industrial and 
technical lines is in no small measure the work of the 
graduates of the engineering colleges, and stands as 
a monument to the far-sightedness, the sound instincts, 
and the high ideals of the men who guided the work. 
But this rapid expansion in industrial and technical 
lines, aided at every turn by the equally rapid develop- 
ment of science, has resulted in making the field of 
NO. 2391, VOL. 95] 

engineering very broad and extremely complicated. 
Engineers have been forced to specialise in limited 
fields, and each year has witnessed a higher degree of 
specialisation and an increase in the amount of subject- 
matter which must be included in the curricula ot the 
schools. To meet this situation, the engineering schools 
have gradually patched the original curriculum by 
adding new subjects here and there and subdividing 
their instruction into an ever-increasing- number of 
more highly specialised courses. The demands on the 
student’s time have become severe, and the ingenuity 
of faculties to frame time-schedules which shall satisfy 
the requirements of all the various departments 1s 
being taxed to the utmost. 
That there is a pressing need for a full and thorough 
study of engineering education is clearly recognised by 
the engineering profession. This recognition has 
manifested itself in the organisation, in 1893, of the 
Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, 
and in the increasing attention which the engineering 
societies and the engineering Press have given to this 
subject. It has recently been clearly expressed by the 
appointment of a joint committee on engineering 
education, whose membership is made up of fifteen 
representatives of the leading national engineering 
societies, and whose function is ‘‘to examine into all 
branches of engineering and to formulate a report on 
the appropriate scope of engineering education.” 
The Carnegie Foundation is undertaking this study 
of engineering education in close conference and hearty 
co-operation with this committee. An important part 
of this inquiry will consist in a study of the conditions 
into which a young engineer enters immediately on 
graduation, and of the estimates which the engineer-— 
ing profession has formed of his needs and his equip- 
ment. Another part of the inquiry will consist of a 
study of the aims, the purposes, the curricula, the 
methods of teaching, and the educational. experiments 
and investigations of the engineering schools. Such 
material, arranged in compact form, should be of 
value to schools and teachers, no less than to engineers’ 
and students. 
The steps being taken to found an American Asso- 
ciation of University Professors are of interest to all 
workers in higher education. 
The movement has been inaugurated by a meeting 
held in Baltimore for the formation of a national 
association of university professors. For) some years 
university teachers have realised that specialisation in 
teaching tended more and more to bring them together 
as specialists, not as unversity teachers. The physio- 
logists, chemists, and philologists meet in groups, but 
nowhere has there been provided a body under which 
all university teachers shall come together, not as 
specialists but as university teachers, to consider the 
problems and the organisation of higher education. 
Such a body ought to be able to promote in a helpful 
way the discussion of questions relating to higher 
education and to the organisation and conduct of our 
universities; such, for example, as the organisation 
of universities into departments, the relations of re- 
search to teaching, the awarding of degrees, the 
methods of appointment and promotion, the relations 
of faculties and trustees, and numerous other questions 
directly affecting the ideals and the needs of university 
teachers and affecting no less the progress and develop- 
ment of the universities themselves. 
Such a body bringing together university teachers 
in all subjects, who meet not as specialists but as men 
engaged in teaching, ought to exercise an admirable 
influence in arousing in the minds of a large number 
of university teachers now absorbed in their own 
specialities an interest in university questions and a 
greater readiness to study such questions together. 
Too many university teachers are content to be ab- 

