THE TREND TOWARD INDUSTRY

Intense competition arising after the World War has forced England to mobilize its industry on a basis of the highest possible efficiency. The University of Southampton is now attempting to remodel its educational system in order to supply industry's demands for college men trained to their work.

Southampton is undertaking three major reforms, of which the increase of emphasis on research, both pure and applied, in connection with the development of local industries, is of the greatest interest to the educational world. In creating research departments especially adapted to meet the needs of Southampton industries, the university has no intention of sacrificing its general educational facilities for the sake of technical specialization. Training men, however, directly for jobs in the Imperial Chemical Industries Company or the British-American Tobacco Company can not fail to limit the scope of their education. Furthermore, if a university is to determine the field of its research by the type of industry common to the locality, it can not aspire to the ideal of being really representative.

On the other hand there are definite advantages to be derived from the university's policy of local concentration. The University of Southampton will have the best laboratory facilities possible and its graduates will be assured of a job on leaving college. With the college's emphasis on engineering and chemical research the town of Southampton undoubtedly will develop further as a center for technical industries. If other universities follow out this policy higher education will resolve itself into a series of semispecialized institutions and the ideal of a comprehensive education would be lost. Southampton, however, in taking this step toward technical specialization has initiated a policy which will receive increasing attention in the course of the solution of England's economic problems.