Technical college

“ In the decade from 1860 to 1870 some twenty-two technical institutions were founded, most of them by the aid of the land grants. The most important of them is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where instruction was first given in 1865 and which has exerted by far the greatest influence upon the development of scientific and technical education. The best technical schools require a high school diploma for admission and have a four-year course of study, but the only technical school on a graduate basis is the School of Mines at Columbia University. ”

“ In England there is a growing tendency to associate technical with secondary education. The central technical college of the City Higher technical instruction in Britain. and Guilds of London Institute, was an institution established exclusively for the purpose of providing the highest grade of engineering education. In this respect it compared more nearly than any other institution with the technical high schools of Germany. The Royal School of Mines, connected with the Royal College of Science, was a similar institution, providing the highest teaching for mining engineers. ”

“ When we come to the construction of a curriculum leading to a bachelor's degree in business, economics, or commerce, we have the problems of the engineering schools. Just how far will specialization be carried, in what sequence will the foundational subjects and the specialties be taken up, and to what extent will other more general subjects not directly contributing to a technical end be admitted? In most institutions of good standards the degree is regarded as representing not only technical proficiency in business but also some acquaintance with science, politics, and letters in general. ”

“ The truth is that methods of construction, details of practice, mechanical appliances, prices of materials and labor, change so rapidly that it is useless to teach many such matters. However important such items are to the practicing engineer, they are of little or no use to the student; for later, when he does have need of them, methods, machines, and prices have changed so much that the information he acquired in college will probably be worse than useless. Technical details are learned of necessity in practice, and more easily then than in college ”

“ The only collegiate training one of the most distinguished American engineers of the last generation had was a general literary course followed by a law course. Further, [Pg 510] a considerable number have successfully practiced engineering, after only a general college education, and this in recent years when engineering curricula have become widely differentiated. Examples in other lines of business could be cited to show that a knowledge of technical details is not the most important element in a preparation for a profession or for business. ”

“ But where is the sub-structure of which a Polytechnic College is the upper story? The answer is that it does not exist. Our elementary and middle school course has no regard to technical instruction, nor is it linked with a system of special technical and art schools for handicraftsmen or for foremen and manager of works. Drawing is restricted to our high schools. ”

“ A technical school, however, should be distinctly above the grade of a business college or a school of stenography in its relations to the ultimate public welfare. It should exert a formative influence upon the future of its professions and not merely mirror existing commercial conditions. It should by precept and requirement lead the short-sighted members of its student body to a desire for a broader preparation, and, relying upon that increasing number of far-sighted employers to care for its graduates, it should confidently anticipate the market for its product. ”

“ It is true, however, that such a course as that outlined above demands a large amount of time, compared with the results attained; and while successful courses in Representation are offered in certain colleges, the great mass of college students, who cannot hope to acquire a high degree of skill, would hesitate to devote a large part of their training to technical work, even if college faculties were willing to grant considerable proportions of credit for it toward the bachelor of arts degree. ”

“ The need for the higher training of the future leaders of industry and the future captains of commerce has been provided by the organisation and establishment of technological schools and colleges. The establishment and organisation of the "Technical University" has been more thorough in Germany than in this country. There we find established newer institutions, of which the Charlottenburg College is the best known and most important, for the higher education of those intended in after-life to perform the more important industrial services of the community. ”

“ The great increase in college students during recent years and the growing emphasis on college activities outside of the work connected with the classroom, especially on those relating to college athletics, would doubtless have left college mathematics in a woefully neglected state if there had not been a rapidly growing interest in technical education, especially in engineering subjects, at the same time. ”

“ In speaking in the Calcutta Council on a resolution for the establishment of a great Polytechnic College, the Home Member was able to point to a fairly long list of measures taken at no small cost by the State to promote technical education in all parts of India, and he rightly urged that there would be little use in creating a sort of technical University until a larger proportion of students had qualified for it by taking advantage of the more elementary courses already provided for them. ”

“ Medicine and Civil Engineering—the Engineering College at Poona, with its workshops forming a technical school, and the Grant Medical College at Bombay—have been fostered and improved, and have been recognized by the University as qualified to send up candidates for the new Science Degree. Several lesser institutions have been brought into existence. ”

“ Lastly, and this need is clearly felt by all acquainted with the subject, we require the development and extension of our Technical Colleges, in order that we may adequately train those whose duty in after-life will be the application of advanced scientific knowledge in the furtherance of the arts and industries of life. ”

“ Executive heads are demanded who have technical training. This has resulted in the establishment of special technical colleges, and compelled a place for engineering in the great universities. The high intelligence demanded by the vocation itself, and the revolution in training caused by the strengthening of its foundations in general education, has finally, beyond all question, raised the work of application of science to industry to the dignity of a profession on a par with the law, medicine, and science. ”

“ Scientific departments have been advantageously established in connection with our well-endowed universities. It is both desirable and practicable to give instruction in mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering in our high grade colleges. This should not be done, however, at the expense of liberal culture.
How far the colleges can meet the demand for technical and practical education depends upon their condition and resources. They cannot make bricks without straw. ”

“ If we attempt to anticipate what these inventions are to produce in the future we are engaged on a problem which is worthy of the very highest speculative ability. It should never be said then that technological instruction, when properly pursued on a scientific basis, is in any way opposed to the high cultivation of the mind or to the objects of a University. It takes its part beside, and in no way under, it. At the same time the objects of a technical institution, its aims and its method, must differ to a considerable extent from those of a University. ”

“ This is one reason why consolidation of the technical school with the university, if the tendency toward specialization in the latter continues, can not bring about economy in instruction. Justification for such consolidation must be sought elsewhere, as shown above. Not only engineering students, but all students pursuing special studies in a university need general courses, and though it may not be possible for us to become a nation of engineers, it is eminently desirable that all educated persons should have at least some general knowledge of engineering. ”

“ During the nineteenth century new institutions for the cultivation of science in application to practical and technological purposes have developed from technical schools of a more elementary character. While known Technische Hochschulen. as ‘technical high schools’ (Technische Hochschulen) , they are institutions of higher learning, and exist side by side with the universities. They include schools of 381 engineering, mining, forestry, agriculture, veterinary medicine, and commerce. ”

“ The commercial and executive side of the work cannot be taught; it must be absorbed by actual participation in the industry. Nor is it impossible to rise to great eminence in the profession without university training, as witness some of our greatest engineers. The university can do much; it can give a broad basis of knowledge and mental training, and can inculcate moral feeling, which entitles men to lead their fellows. It can teach the technical fundamentals of the multifold sciences which the engineer should know and must apply. ”

“ It is that the University School should itself be a centre of inspiration for the engineering profession; that it should be a place where original experimental work is always being carried on, where inventions are tried out, and where engineering firms may come for help in carrying out tests and experiments to advance technical knowledge, and particularly to assist in the solution of engineering problems of special importance to the State.
All the large modern engineering and manufacturing corporations have realized the value of scientific research. ”

“ The large university to-day represents all stages in the adjustment of intellectual activity to social demands, from the intensely practical schools of engineering, correlating with the technical progress of industry, back to the departments of literary scholarship—perhaps as pure an anachronism as we have in the intellectual world to-day. The demands for technical knowledge have pulled the university along, as it were, by the nose, and strung it through the ages, so that a “professor” to-day may be an electrical expert fresh from Westinghouse, or an archaic delver into forgotten poetry. ”

“ It is only in the university or tertiary grade of education that specialized or technological training for the higher industrial posts should commence. At this stage of education, general and professional teaching are more closely associated, and the names of the faculties of the new universities in the United Kingdom will in future indicate the several branches of professional work to which the different courses of university study are intended to lead. Of late there has been a marked development of distinctly technical instruction in connexion with the colleges of university rank. ”

“ Professional training and technological work at large have of course not lost ground, either in the volume and the rigour of their requirements or in the application bestowed in their pursuit; but as within the circle of academic interests, these utilitarian disciplines have lost their preferential place and have been pushed to one side; so that the professional and technical schools are now in fact rated as adjuncts rather than as integral constituents of the university corporation. ”

“ It will be seen, therefore, that in nearly all European countries, instruction in engineering in all its branches and in chemical technology has become a recognized part of a university course, and that the faculty of applied science has been so enlarged as to provide technical education of the highest grade.
Some of the best schools for the higher technical instruction—for the training of masters and of those who are to occupy the position of managers in engineering; and industrial works — are found in the United States. ”

“ Technical Education and the University. It is at this highest point that technical education comes into connection with the University and polytechnic institutions. Whether the one or the other should be the culminating point is a problem which has been resolved in different ways by the thinking and practical minds of Europe. One thing, however, is certain, that whether a polytechnic institution or University should be the ultimate home of science education, a preparatory system laying the groundwork of general literature and science can do nothing but good. ”

“ The chief distinction consists in the arrangement of courses of instruction in the several departments, in the admission of students having a non-classical preliminary training, and in the absence of certain faculties found in the university and the addition of others. It is not correct to say that the technical high school is a professional school as distinguished from the university; for the faculties of law, medicine and theology give to the university as distinctly a professional character as the faculty of engineering gives to the technical high school. ”

“ The error of restricting university studies to a certain limited range of subjects, which led in Germany to the establishment of technical high schools as institutions distinct from the universities, has been avoided. Engineering, in the broadest sense of the term, has been recognized as a branch of university education of the same order as medicine or law. Laboratories and workshops have for many years formed part of the equipment of the principal university colleges. ”