L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 213 
graduates, I doubt ; many of them could equally well and perhaps better 
be filled by students from technical schools. I do not think this is an 
experience confined to the Imperial College ; indeed, to judge from in- 
formation I have had from other sources, I should say that we had been 
on the whole more fortunate than other similar institutions. 
Different branches of industry seem to hold different views about the 
value of a university education in science. Compare, for example, the 
present position of the university chemist with that of the engineer. The 
chemical industry calls out for university graduates ; every year you will 
find leading representatives of the prominent firms in the universities, 
looking for recruits. It is not demanded of the recruit that he should 
possess a large stock of practical knowledge ; it is expected of him that he 
should have high scientific qualifications, and that he should have shown 
aptitude for independent work. The attitude of the engineering industry 
seems different. In some branches of the engineering industry the 
university graduate is as welcome as he is in most branches of the chemical 
industry ; but in many he seems to be regarded as a misfit. One pro- 
minent manufacturer, the creator of a great industry, who has lived most 
of his life near a university, has been known to boast that he employs no 
university graduates. Many employers seem to expect of an engineering 
graduate a degree of acquaintance with practice that they have no right 
to expect ; for we do not pretend to teach at universities what can be 
better learned at the works. Finally my experience is that too many 
engineering graduates find themselves in blind alleys from which they 
have little opportunity to escape. 
Where does the fault lie ?. With the employers or with the universities ? 
I think there are faults on both sides: let me leave the faults of the em- 
ployers for others to discuss, and for time to correct, and deal with some 
of the problems of university schools of engineering. 
Engineering is a branch of technology. The object of a university 
school of technology is to seek to advance and apply scientific knowledge 
for practical purposes. Many people at universities still think there is 
something derogatory about this; they would prefer that instruction 
and research had no relation to the practical needs of mankind, forgetting 
perhaps that most if not all university education started with a practical 
aim in view, or we should have had no schools of law or medicine. 
Let me quote from the report of the University Grants Committee for 
1921: ‘ There is nothing in the nature of technology which makes it 
necessarily unsuited to the methods and spirit of university work. . . . 
The very fact that this alliance [between science and industry] is intimate, 
and the border line between pure and applied science difficult to define, 
involves serious difficulties for the universities. Wecannot ignore a certain 
tendency to lay an exaggerated emphasis on utilitarian applications in 
1 In his Presidential Address to Section B in 1913 Prof. W. P. Wynne said :— 
‘ Once again the cry has been raised in the press that chemists trained in our 
Universities are of little value in industrial pursuits ; they are too academic ; 
they are not worth their wage—little as that often is, whether judged by a 
labourer’s hire or the cost of a University training.’ Evidently some progress 
has been made ! 
