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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 491. 



Your letter makes me wish that I could go to 

 St. Louis, for it is a good work, that of trying 

 to lessen the abuse of honorary degrees. * * * 

 Every learned man, be he scientist or humanita- 

 rian, should insist on all occasions that honorary 

 degrees should be given only for academic dis- 

 tinction, and never be given under any circum- 

 stances whatever to a politician, a soldier or a 

 business man (as such). * » * has sinned 

 grievously (along with the rest) in this matter, 

 and she should be publicly and severely blamed 

 (along with the rest) for debasing her degrees 

 in this manner. » * * 



I trust that others who are here, whether 

 members of the society or not, will now 

 take part in the discussion. 



Professor Burrill : 



I suppose if this matter could be settled 

 for ourselves here this afternoon it would 

 be very easy. I have a suspicion, how- 

 ever, that whatever we say or do here 

 will not wholly settle the matter outside. 

 It seems to me that the evident tendency 

 of late has been to differentiate degrees 

 along the lines suggested by President Van 

 Hise. It seems to me that already in a 

 great many of the leading institutions the 

 precedent exists, as suggested by Presi- 

 dent Jordan, that would permit the de- 

 gree of B.S. to be accorded for a course in 

 applied scientific work; then, we might 

 well enough have the A.B. degree for all 

 of the courses not tending directly towards 

 a professional pursuit. The degree of 

 bachelor of science possibly may not be the 

 proper one for those taking an engineering 

 course, a course in agriculture, etc.; but 

 that seems to be the one that has been 

 pretty generally adopted for that purpose. 

 In the University of Illinois the matter 

 had been discussed some years ago, and 

 lately it has been revived. The degree of 

 bachelor of science was given to students 

 who had taken major work in any science. 

 Now the degree of A.B. is given to all stu- 

 dents except those that take courses in 

 engineering, in agriculture and in the new 



school of commerce. The last has not been 

 settled. I take it, however, that the degree 

 of A.B. will be used there. 



There is another thing, however. Wheth- 

 er it is settled thus or in any other man- 

 ner that seems to be satisfactory, no per- 

 son taking a course in civil engineering 

 would care for the A.B. degree compared 

 with the degree of C.E. His work is 

 shown pretty well by that degree, the de- 

 gree of civil engineer, and though they are 

 not so well established, the degrees of me- 

 chanical engineer and electrical engineer 

 follow in the same line. Then there is the 

 difficulty about the candidates in archi- 

 tecture. There are several very prominent 

 architectural schools in our country in 

 which students prepare themselves directly 

 for the profession. They confer the degree 

 of B.S. or B.Arch., followed by M.Arch., 

 and finally perhaps by D.Arch. 



These professional degrees are given 

 either immediately at the end of the course 

 of four years, or after some further course 

 of study. If I may quote again the institu- 

 tion with which I am most familiar, the 

 degree of bachelor of science is given at 

 the end of four years in the courses of en- 

 gineering, and then after a further year's 

 work, usually directly following in the line 

 of the specialty — really professional work 

 —the C.E. or M.E. or M.Arch. degree is 

 given. Something like this, I think, must 

 be done ; this terminal degree— perhaps we 

 may call it master's degree— must be spe- 

 cialized, whether or not we differentiate the 

 bachelor degree. I am of the opinion, as 

 I say, that the trend of the country, of 

 the institutions, is in favor of making this 

 distinction. 



The Chairman: 



Are there other speakers? If not, the 

 time for adjournment is rapidly approach- 

 ing. Before adjourning the meeting I 

 should like to say that as Professor Bur- 



