Page:Engineering as a vocation (IA cu31924004245605).pdf/97

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION
83

European university to find a "privat docent" in fairly active competition with a well-known professor.

The writer has no wish to be ranked with the men who are wholesale in their condemnation of American schools of engineering. He has no wish to be ranked with the meu who condemn at all, but he is not blind to some grave defects which are easily remedied and which exist because few teachers are able to realize that their former students have grown to be men, and actually have a better knowledge of conditions than the teachers themselves. Few men whose opinions are worth anything care to see much of a change from standard curricula.

Engineering teachers have organizations, as before mentioned, in which many prominent practitioners hold membership. In many schools the alumnæ are represented on the governing boards and these men endeavor to correct defects they observed while students. There are many teachers who are not graybearded book worms, but who are live, energetic men who made a success of practical work and later took up teaching from choice. Many of them are of high rank as consulting engineers, and in conventions of engineers are listened to with respect and are placed at the heads of good committees. "Common sense and mathematics" are a good combination.

Considering the fact that the financial reward