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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 759 



worked out a consensus of actual schedules 

 which allowed 7,450 to 8,100 "hours" for 

 27 subjects, including language, mathe- 

 matics, the physical sciences and seven 

 differentiated lines of engineering. From 

 this they prepared an essential curriculum, 

 grouping preparatory studies and engi- 

 neering subjects into four parallel columns, 

 respectively, for civil, mechanical, mining 

 and electrical engineers. This was for the 

 usual four year course. But if require- 

 ments for admission are lowered to the ex- 

 tent of half a year, as just suggested, some 

 four-year courses, as now arranged, must 

 be curtailed at various points. 



Hence many raise the point that four 

 years is quite insufficient to fulfil a broad 

 enough program of culture studies and the 

 ideal requirements for graduation. Con- 

 sequently a growing interest in the five- 

 year or six-year curriculum. The experi- 

 ence of the speaker for more than thirty 

 years has been with a two-year program 

 of studies and practise exclusively in the 

 line of civil engineering — but preceded at 

 first by four years of preparatory work in 

 college, which, during the last fifteen 

 years, has been reduced to three years of 

 collegiate work in language and science, 

 including two years of graphics. The five- 

 year course is about as long as the young 

 man of average financial resources can 

 undertake; and too long for many, who 

 then resort to an intermediate year of 

 actual practise, which always brings more 

 than financial return to the student, in 

 better appreciation of his studies. This 

 question is still under discussion. Pro- 

 fessor Perry, of London, has said recently, 

 in correspondence: "May I suggest that 

 you Americans are trying to do too much 

 at college. You are trying to teach every- 

 thing at an engineering college. It seems 

 to me that a college ought to teach a man 

 how to go on educating himself after he 



leaves college. ... If this is the aim of a 

 college, then a five or six year course is 

 all too long." But the University of 

 Michigan has recently announced a six- 

 year course with three degrees in sequence : 

 bachelor of science, bachelor of engineer- 

 ing and master of engineering. 



And Harvard University, within a few 

 weeks, has ceased to debate the question by 

 separating her engineering school entirely 

 from the collegiate or undergraduate 

 courses and making it distinctly a gradu- 

 ate school. Harvard thus tardily recog- 

 nizes engineering as a profession, on an 

 equality with law, medicine and theology. 

 The fact of such equality has long been 

 evident enough. The practicians in the 

 art of engineering have long levied tribute 

 from widely diverse fields of scientific in- 

 quiry. They have profited from the labors 

 of the mathematicians since the days of 

 the Bernouillis and Descartes; only they 

 have discarded mathematical abstractions 

 and made mathematics available as a work- 

 ing tool. The engineers have directed the 

 researches of chemists, metallurgists and 

 biologists to useful ends in the operation 

 of water-works, works of sanitation, rail- 

 making, etc. They have made chemical 

 and bacteriological laboratories a necessary 

 adjunct in various works. A civil engi- 

 neer vindicated the veracity of Herodotus 

 (discredited by some scholars) by making 

 actual survey of and identifying the mar- 

 gin of the (so-called mythical) lake Moeris, 

 and revealing to the modern world the vast 

 irrigation system of ancient Egypt; thus 

 showing how the British administration of 

 to-day has singular analogy to the policy 

 of Prime Minister Joseph in the control of 

 the irrigation by the government. A civil 

 engineer of to-day rescued the manuscript 

 of Frontinus from neglect by the scholars, 

 and introduced that capable and pains- 

 taking water-commissioner of ancient Rome 



