884 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 753 



much specialization in our engineering in- 

 struction. We have to-day in the engi- 

 neering profession many specialists, but too 

 few men with broad knowledge, broad 

 abilities and a broad outlook. 



One common defect in your self-taught 

 engineer is that, however proficient he may 

 be in the one field where he has had ex- 

 perience, he knows little outside that field. 

 It is the lot of most engineers to change 

 their occupation many times in the course 

 of a lifetime. One branch of engineering 

 work falls off and they are obliged to turn 

 to another. It is the advantage of the man 

 with the broad college training that he can 

 do this with facility. The specialist, how- 

 ever, when work in his specialty fails, finds 

 his occupation gone. 



Perhaps the error which is most to blame 

 for the specialization in our college courses 

 is the error that the college education in 

 engineering produces an engineer. The 

 engineering graduate when he leaves the 

 college halls is not yet an engineer, and 

 would not be one even if you doubled the 

 length of your course. There are indeed 

 exceptions. An occasional young man of 

 great ability and with a practical bent of 

 mind will get enough out of his college 

 course, supplemented by wide reading and 

 vacation work, to be fit for considerable 

 responsibility at graduation. But such 

 exceptions only prove the rule. The col- 

 lege course in engineering is only laying a 

 foundation on which the finished super- 

 structure is to be erected through accumu- 

 lated experience in actual work. 



Now it may seem to some of you students 

 a little disappointing to spend four or five 

 valuable years and then only succeed in 

 laying the foundation to become an engi- 

 neer. But I want to assure you that it is 

 in this very matter of foundation that the 

 coUege-trained engineer has an advantage 

 over his professional brother who "picks 

 up ' ' engineering. With a broad and deep 



foundation, there is no limit to the size of 

 your superstructure and no limit to the 

 speed with which you may erect it. 



But the boy who starts in at engineering 

 work when he leaves the common school is 

 like one erecting a building and putting 

 the foundation under it as he goes along. 

 The job is not impossible, given patience 

 and perseverance enough, but it takes a lot 

 of both. Progress is slow, and the chances 

 are that the man will be satisfied finally 

 with a modest structure. Besides, founda- 

 tions put in in this way are never quite as 

 strong, never quite as reliable, as those 

 built in the regular way. Sometimes such 

 foundations fail and down comes the build- 

 ing. 



The business of the engineering college, 

 then, is to lay a broad, secure foundation. 

 I am not objecting, mark you, to schools 

 of a different sort. There is room and 

 need for correspondence schools, for night 

 schools, for industrial schools, for schools 

 that may give special instruction in special 

 fields. But if you aim to give an educa- 

 tion to young men that will best fit them 

 for high and responsible positions in the 

 engineering world, then you must make 

 your training a broad foundation. 



And let me carry the simile one step 

 further. You will find great difficulty in 

 laying a secure foundation in a deep swamp 

 or in fathomless quicksand. It will be a 

 far better foundation if underlaid by rock 

 or hardpan. So if you want to build a 

 good foundation of engineering education, 

 you must have to start with a boy of proper 

 mental and moral and physical make-up. 

 Now how will you restrict your work to 

 such boys? That is, I think, one of the 

 most difficult problems which our American 

 colleges have to solve. 



They are trying to solve this problem by 

 raising their entrance requirements. They 

 are trying to solve the other problem, how 

 they may send out only high-class men into 



