976 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. No. 548. 



Harvard for this purpose, and without it 

 will have ample competition with the 

 rapidly growing schools of the Middle and 

 Western States. 



III. Of two competing schools, either 

 one will be better than the other or they 

 will be different. If Harvard should build 

 up a great technical school, though ovxrs 

 might on the whole be the better. Harvard 

 would undoubtedly draw to herself many 

 strong students. Every strong student 

 that we lose is a distinct disadvantage to 

 us. We should keep all the strong stu- 

 dents, if possible, and let the weak ones go 

 to other schools. 



If Harvard should make the Lawrence 

 Scientific School a graduate school, as we 

 understand is desired by its Dean, would 

 not many of the strongest men who come 

 to Boston to study engineering prefer to go 

 where they would be associated solely with 

 more mature men, all having completed 

 their undergraduate courses and devoting 

 themselves entirely to professional work, 

 instead of coming to the Institute, where 

 they would be associated -with younger 

 men, and with many special students, in an 

 undergraduate school? 



IV. Technical education in this country 

 is scarcely fifty years old. It is not yet 

 on the same plane with instruction in the 

 so-called learned professions. The time 

 has not yet come for making engineering 

 schools generally graduate schools, like so 

 many of those of law and medicine. The 

 Institute and most other engineering 

 schools must remain primarily, for some 

 time at least, undergraduate schools; but 

 the level of industrial education will in the 

 course of time be gradually lifted. The 

 engineer, in order to reach the highest 

 standard, will be expected to be liberally 

 trained and yet to be a specialist. The 

 Institute being one of many, when the uni- 

 versity technical schools more generally 



reach the standard of the Institute, — and 

 some of them have already fully reached 

 and perhaps in some respects exceeded it, 

 — is there not ground for believing that 

 the young man who desires to qualify him- 

 self most completely for the engineering 

 profession will seek the school which has 

 the broadest environment, where he wiU be 

 brought into relations with students of 

 other professions? 



V. The Institute having shown the way, 

 there are now many technical schools where 

 forty years ago there were few. A great 

 majority of these are intimately connected 

 with universities, and the fees at many of 

 them are very low ; they are doing excellent 

 work, some as good work as the Institute ; 

 they have a much larger body of students ; 

 and they are turning out each year a much 

 larger body of graduates than the isolated 

 technical schools. The influence of these 

 university technical schools, industrially 

 and educationally, is increasing relatively 

 in comparison with the isolated technical 

 schools. ]May not our own influence di- 

 minish in the course of time, as the body of 

 alumni of the university technical schools 

 increases in number and in influence? 

 AVill we not gain by placing ourselves in 

 the main educational current in the coun- 

 try, by allying ourselves with our most 

 powerful university, especially as we can 

 do so Avithout sacrificing our methods or 

 our control? 



VI. Competition from the West will in- 

 crease. The industrial centre of the 

 country is shifting. AVhen the Institute 

 was established, it was in New England; 

 and even the iron industry and the mining 

 industry were important here. As the 

 years go by, new technical schools will be 

 established in the West, at places like Chi- 

 cago and Pittsburg, either independent or 

 connected with universities. These schools 

 may well be in closer touch with the indus- 



