other. The tendency seems to be towards the formation in the large universities of a school, or college, of liberal arts and of various professional or semiprofessional schools, or colleges, of law, engineering, agriculture, medicine and the like. The relation of these several departments to each other depends to a considerable extent upon the respective rank of the various schools in the matter of requirements for admission and graduation. In some universities, the professional schools are virtually graduate schools, being thus equal in rank with the post-graduate work of the college of liberal arts. In most universities, however, the various departments are of fairly equal rank and especially as regards the departments of engineering and of liberal arts.

In the University of Wisconsin, the organization is a simple one and, so far as it concerns the engineering departments is similar to that already existing in several universities and which seems likely to become quite general. The university is composed of four colleges; the college of letters and science, the college of law, the college of engineering and the college of agriculture. Each college has its separate faculty, presided over by the dean and composed of all those giving instruction of any considerable amount to the students of that particular college. The faculty of the college of engineering thus includes certain professors of mathematics, physics, chemistry and the like, although those professors who give instruction to occasional students only are not considered members of the engineering faculty.

The university faculty is composed of all members of the instructional staff.

All college matters pertaining to the students of any college are controlled by the faculty of that college. This includes such matters as scholarship, recommendation of baccalaureate degrees, minor cases of discipline, etc., and the initiative regarding courses of study. These last are passed upon by the college faculty and go to the university faculty for final action. An important duty of the dean is to act as presiding officer of the college faculty and member of all its committees. Business transmitted to the university faculty is presented by him.

The dean is also the executive officer of the college in the departmental and business relations, and in these matters is directly responsible to the president. The ordinary routine of business of all departments in the college is therefore through the dean, although any officer may bring directly to the attention of the president anything which he thinks of such importance as to render this desirable.

To make clearer the relation of the dean to the departments of the college of engineering in the University of Wisconsin, it should be said that in the organization of the technical departments, each department is under a head professor, who is directly responsible to the dean. The number of departments is much larger than the number of courses of study and does not correspond in general with such courses. Thus, there is a department of railway engineering, a department of hydraulic engineering, a department of steam engineering, etc. There is no department of civil engineering, nor of mechanical engineering. The departments are thus organized with reference

to the nature of the work to be taught, and not with reference to the group of studies making up a prescribed course. They are thus organized exactly on the same basis as the departments in a college of liberal arts. There are provided the usual courses of study-civil engineering, mechanical engineering, etc. These are arranged with reference to the needs of the students and not at all with reference to the departments of the instruction. The department of hydraulic engineering gives all the instruction that is given in hydraulics; the department of mechanics, all the instruction in mechanics, etc. Such matters as pertain to the administration of the group of students taking the civil engineering course, for example, are referred to a committee on the civil engineering course, consisting of four or five professors whose time is devoted mainly to the civil engineering students. Under our system of student-advisers described later, matters of this sort are not numerous.

The number of relatively independent departments and of professors of full rank is thus larger than is likely to be the case where the departments correspond to the courses of study. There are eleven independent departments in the college. For faculty purposes the college of engineering, as already noted, includes teachers of certain non-technical studies; for purposes of departmental and business administration, the college includes only the technical depart

ments.

The annual budget, relative to the teaching staff and to all expenses of the college, is prepared by the dean from recommendations by the heads of depart

ments and upon consultation with the president. He is expected to take the initiative in recommendations regarding head professors, but recommendations regarding subordinate members of departments are expected to come to the dean from the heads of the departments. These recommendations are transmitted to the president and by him to the regents. All formal communications thus pass to the president through the dean; but it is, in many cases, helpful for various members of the college to consult the president directly regarding matters in the department.

The budget for apparatus and improvements for the college of engineering is usually passed upon by the regents in one lump sum to be expended through requisitions approved by the dean and president, and authorized by the executive committee of regents up to the limit provided for in the budget. All purchases are made on orders based upon approved requisitions, which orders receive the approval of the dean and are then transmitted to the business office. All bills of whatever kind are sent from the business office to the dean's office, and thence distributed to the several departments for inspection and approval, after which they are returned through the dean's office and receive his approval, and then go to the business office for payment. The distribution of the apparatus fund is made by the dean in consultation with the heads of departments. This is a matter of much importance, as the available amount of money is always insufficient for the needs of the college.

The dean is thus made responsible for all expenditures and his office is, to a considerable degree, a

business office for the approval of purchases and the auditing of bills.

In the large university, one of the most important and perhaps most difficult matters of administration is that of the supervision of the work of the students of the first and second years. The small college is now-a-days making the most of the proposition that the welfare of students is looked after to better advantage in the small college than in the large university. In some respects, there is probably some truth in this statement, especially with regard to the immature young man whose habits of work are not very strong and whose moral fiber is not sound. We all recognize the type of student; but I think we will agree that the average student in an engineering school will belong to the type of industrious student who is in no great danger of falling into bad habits through too large a measure of liberty. This question will always be an open one, but as the engineering school approaches more towards the professional basis, this problem will be of less importance.

In the University of Wisconsin, the supervision of the work of the younger students is a subject which has been very carefully considered, especially within the past three or four years, both with respect to the character of the instruction given and to the system by which their progress may be noted and deficiencies checked. In the old-time small college and in many universities, one of the chief functions of the dean relates to this part of the work. In a department having 700 to 1000 students it is, however, obviously impossible for the dean personally to super