462 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 690 



by grants from our scholarship funds and 

 those of the state, which can not be award- 

 ed with proper discrimination to boys in 

 advance of their coming to the institute. 

 Moreover, as the student gets older and has 

 had more training, it is easier for him to 

 get remunerative employment in the sum- 

 mer vacations. It will, too, diminish the 

 tendency for students to go to other insti- 

 tutions for a single year or two merely for 

 reasons of economy. Finally it is the most 

 equitable and from a financial standpoint 

 the safest one for the institute to pursue in 

 effecting a reduction of its tuition charges, 

 ;since the first-year instruction is less costly 

 than the more specialized instruction of the 

 higher years. This plan would, however, 

 remedy only in part the difficulties of our 

 high tuition ; for our scholarship funds are 

 not adequate to meet the needs of our 

 deserving students in the higher years. 

 This is fairly evident merely from the 

 statement that the scholarship grants to 

 Tindergraduate students formed last year 

 only nine per cent, of the total tuition fees 

 paid by them. Ampler funds must, there- 

 fore, be secured either through an appeal 

 to the generosity of private donors or 

 through further grants from this common- 

 wealth, which can not afford to allow the 

 opportunity of a higher technological edu- 

 cation to remain closed to such of its youth 

 as are fully qualified to receive it. 



REQUIRED SUMMER WORK 



Coming now to matters more closely re- 

 lated to. the work of instruction, I would 

 first bring to your attention the extension 

 of the required work of the institute 

 courses for a period of four or five weeks 

 into the summer. Such an extension can 

 best be made, not by lengthening our pres- 

 ent term, but by providing smnmer schools 

 which our regular students are required to 

 attend and to which they will be admitted 

 free of charge, in the summei's at the end 



of the first two school years. The impor- 

 tance of this extension of our regular work 

 can be fully appreciated only by those who 

 are intimately acquainted with the difficul- 

 ties and defects of our present system of 

 instruction; but the main aspects of this 

 matter can be readily understood. The 

 educational problem of the institute, as has 

 already been stated, is to give to students 

 with only a high-school preparation a lib- 

 eral education, a thorough training in fun- 

 damental scientific subjects, and sufficient 

 technical knowledge to enable them to enter 

 at once upon the practise of their profes- 

 sion. Under the present conditions, as I 

 have already said, we must for most of our 

 students attempt to do this as far as pos- 

 sible in a period of four years. The op- 

 portunities of the four-year period have, 

 however, not yet been fully utilized. Our 

 summer vacations form one third of the 

 whole year; and during this time most of 

 our younger students are unoccupied or 

 are at work in places from which they 

 derive no educational advantage. The as- 

 signment of even four or five weeks of the 

 summer vacations after the first and second 

 years to those portions of our work which 

 consist largely in the acquirement of tech- 

 nical skill and experience, such as labora- 

 tory practise, shop-work, drawing and 

 work in the field and in industrial estab- 

 lishments, would so relieve the present 

 overcrowded curriculum that an amount 

 of good entirely out of proportion to the 

 time gained could be accomplished. The 

 time gained would, I am sure, be devoted 

 by the faculty not to further specialization 

 in the engineering branches, but to some 

 increase in general studies and to more 

 thorough training in the fundamental prin- 

 ciples of the sciences underlying the pro- 

 fessional work. The attempt would be 

 made to concentrate the attention of the 

 student upon fewer subjects at one time, 

 to demand more thought and less learning 



