of uniformity in this matter. With the increasing number of students who go from one college to another, uniformity would be most desirable, and there is no good reason why it should not exist. In the later years of the course the conditions in different parts of the country may be dictated by varying requirements, but this would not have much weight during the first two years. With regard to the amount of work, I wish to speak a word for the system in vogue at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where the number of hours is divided up among the different subjects instead of any scheme by which an artificial number of credits is allowed for each subject. Take the fifty-four hours which Professor Fish's paper seems to show to be the general consensus of opinion as to the amount of work the average student can do in a week. Divide that up and let each department call for as much of its time in attendance at the rooms of the department as it may see fit.

DEAN RAYMOND: I wish to endorse what has been said as to the meaning of this hour-system of credit. We are forced at our school to assign credits simply to keep in conformity with the rest of the institution; but we do practically what has been stated; and I fancy most every one does. We assume fifty-four or fifty-five hours. We have a five-and-a-half-day week. We have to use Saturday forenoon. We assume that a certain amount of work is to be accomplished in each of the different subjects, and we try to accomplish it regardless of the number of hours spent. Sometimes one subject is done more rapidly than the others. The evidence of these figures shows the

meaninglessness of the system of hours of credit. If a student does his preparation in note-writing outside, he is supposed to put in a little less time in the laboratory.

PROFESSOR COOLEY: Our first year at Michigan is absolutely the same for all branches in engineering and architecture. Our second year up to two years ago was also practically the same for all branches of engineering. The differentiation began the third year. There is a very slight differentiation in the second year at the present time. We work five and a half days in a week, and there is also some evening work for men who have electives in English.

I suppose this society has considered in the past the question of extending the length of time for the courses in engineering. All this points to a very overloaded week of work, and when the course is finished we have not disposed of the subjects that should be considered before a student is graduated. I look forward with much hope when we can all come together on a five or six year course. The requirement in Michigan is now four years plus a summer session of six weeks. We will have the fifth year just as soon as we can reach it, and then we will have the sixth year just as soon as we can reach that.

Twenty-five years ago the course in engineering was four years long, and with relatively only a few of the technical subjects now required to be taught. The course then was mainly in civil engineering, now we have a large number of engineering courses, and the student must if he succeed well, have some instruction in a number of them. We all know of

numerous cases where the graduate in one course has found his field of work in another. It is idle to attempt to crowd into four years the new lines of work along with the old.

PROFESSOR WILLISTON: There seems to be a very general feeling among the members of this Society that it would be a most desirable thing if our engineering courses could be lengthened to either five or six years. We do not seem to be satisfied with the education which many of our graduates have when they leave college. There does not seem to be opportunity to give them both the general culture and the technical training which we feel they should have. These sentiments have been expressed again and again in the papers and in the discussions at the different meetings of the Society, and yet I cannot help feeling that the solution suggested of lengthening the courses is a wrong one. The ultimate cause of the evil is the large amount of time which is wasted in the boy's life between the day when he first goes to school and the day when he graduates from his engineering course. The typical American boy is apt to regard his school work largely as a joke. He tries to find how little work he can do and still keep out of trouble. The idea of trying to do it as well as he can, or to accomplish anything for its own sake, is entirely foreign to every school boy except the occasional student. This is true until he enters college or the engineering school, and even during the first year or two in college he seldom devotes himself to his work with quite the same seriousness that he does later.

Public sentiment outside of school and college is very largely responsible for this. Boys are quick to copy from their elders, and if the American public held in higher respect and esteem those who had acquired culture and training, and refused to give to others positions of importance and responsibility, boys, too, would at once feel the importance of striving to acquire the best possible education, as they would know that it was essential to success.

But one of the purposes of this Society is, so far as it is possible, to help to create and establish such a general public sentiment.

I was very strongly impressed with the difference between the public sentiment in this regard in this country and in Germany last summer as I visited a number of the German schools, and saw the great contrast between the intensive work which the average German boy does during his school period, and the work which the American boy does in the American school during the same time. The German school has the same number of years from the time the boy enters the school until he enters the university or the polytechnic school that the American school has twelve years-and they correspond very closely to our twelve years. And yet the accomplishment on the other side of the water is enormously greater than here. The difference is almost entirely that during the whole of this period of twelve years the boy is really trying to accomplish all that he can, while in this country he is too often trying to see how little he can do, without encountering severe reprimand. I feel, therefore, that it is a mistake for

the engineering schools to simply accept things as they are and say, "We will extend the age at which a young man shall begin his actual life work," and not issue a vigorous protest against the early waste of time.

The young men who graduate from our engineering schools do not start on their life work any too young to-day, and it seems to me that the step in the right direction would be to insist that the young men who in the future may enter them shall have more thorough and better preparation, so that we shall not have to do over again work that ought to have been done in the preparatory school. If the men who enter the engineering schools really had the working knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry which they are supposed to have, and fundamental notions of physics and chemistry, and good training in English and modern languages, most of the difficulties would disappear.

DEAN KENT: I hope Professor Cooley will go ahead and establish his five or six years' school, and I hope that Professor Raymond will go ahead with his individual classes. But whether all our schools should follow their example is a different question. The question is what is our object in these engineering schools. One object is to turn out men who will be the best kind of engineers, not when they graduate, but many years later; and for such object no doubt six years would be better than four. But if the object is to take the average product of the high school and give them such an education that when they are thirty years of age they will say, "The education I