i68 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



though we believed) that all that universities can give to the young 

 engineer is given in their engineering schools. Specialisation is easy, 

 if the demand of industry were for specialists ; but that, as I tried just 

 now to show, would be a sorry outlook for ourselves, and we ought to be 

 glad that in fact the demand is plainly different. Glad, but not com- 

 placent : for to meet that demand deliberately, instead of merely assuming 

 that it will be met, we shall have to adopt a standpoint very different from 

 what is customary in discussions of ' training for industry '. We must 

 not lightly assume that ' first year work ' can be done at school without 

 detriment to the cultural education which industry has begun to value ; 

 or that we have done our duty by our students, when every hour of the 

 working day is absorbed by some lecture or laboratory course, and no 

 appreciable time is left for those divergent pursuits which we lump 

 together under the heading of ' undergraduate activities '. In my experi- 

 ence it is these activities — too often forgotten in our planning — which do 

 most to develop the qualities that are desired in our products. Their 

 scientific and technical training must be our first concern ; but seeking 

 to fulfil this duty we must not plan as though automatically, in any odd 

 hour that we leave vacant, our other aims will be realised. 



7. I am not so foolhardy as to obtrude my personal views in detail, 

 but in principle I will try to state them plainly, and I will outline now one 

 possible scheme of action in this business of planning. First of all we must 

 decide the purpose which our honours courses are meant to serve. Here 

 my view is at least clear-cut : their purpose is to train recruits for industry, 

 and the taking of honours in a final examination should indicate an 

 assimilation of engineering principles adequate in a man who is starting 

 a professional or industrial career — but not more than this. It may be 

 objected that this view makes no provision for the really first-class man : 

 I agree that it makes no special provision, but not that this is an objection ; 

 because to me, as I have said already, the first-class man does not seem the 

 essence of the problem. 



For what, after all, is this first-class ability, that it should demand an 

 examination specially designed to detect it ? Is it something that would 

 escape detection otherwise ? If you mean qualities of such value to 

 industrialists that they should seek it even at the cost of higher salaries, 

 then I suggest that we ought to inquire of industrialists, whether in their 

 view these qualities can be expected to reveal themselves in a written 

 examination. I suspect that the answer will be something of this kind : 

 * In examinations as they are to-day, it matters little to us whether a man 

 has taken a first- or second-class, provided that his personality is suitable. 

 He must have the requisite personality, and his knowledge of engineering 

 principles must be real and ready — ready to be turned to the various 

 problems that arise in our particular activities. But what we want we are 

 as likely to find in your second class as in your first.' 



If, on the other hand, when you talk of first-class ability you mean 

 ability to do research, then I am prepared to hazard an answer of my own. 

 Research ability reveals itself as ability to do research. Examinations are 

 not its best detector : their proper function is to test that what has been 

 taught has been absorbed, and research cannot be taught — or even its 

 methods — except informally, in the course of some actual investigation. 



