WHITHER ENGINEERING SCHOOL

The scores of complaints from graduates and undergraduates about the conditions in the Engineering School bring again to the foreground a department of the University which has escaped the notice of nearly everyone in the College. The isolation began when Engineering School students were banned from the Houses and apparently it has continued during the present administration.

President Lowell, although he never revealed the reason for prohibiting engineers from the Houses, might well have had in mind the object of developing a matchless graduate school. The complaints however, coming in the main from graduate students, indicate that no such transformation has taken place. They point out decrepit laboratories, ancient equipment, and deficient courses.

At present there seem to be only two possible solutions to the problem. Either the Engineering School must improve or it must be discontinued. Graduates assert that there is very little left in the present curriculum to attract men to the School. They claim that Professor Sauveur is the only redeeming feature of the Metallurgy department and that he will soon be forced by age to retire. The presence of the Institute of Technology in the same city should either force the discontinuance of the school or stimulate it to improvement.

Especially damning is the criticism that no adequate courses in aeronautics are given in the Engineering School. It would seem that this science, which has developed so rapidly in the past few years, should be included in the list of courses of any reputable engineering school. But the absence of extensive course in the subject is merely another indication, along with the deplorable conditions in the laboratories, of the backwardness of the Harvard Engineering School. To Claim that the subject is of such recent birth that it has not come to the attention of the authorities would be to raise the question of how the developments in communication engineering ever found their way into the curriculum.

There are several basic questions involved in the teaching of engineering. If the Engineering School is to be a trade school the most modern equipment is necessary. If it is to concern itself with instruction in the fundamentals of engineering the necessity is not so acute. But a conflict of principle appears in the present set-up of the School. The trips to the Watertown Arsenal are justified on the grounds that in the government's plant the students become acquainted with the very latest developments in the metallurgy and gain essential practical knowledge first-hand. Students on the other hand claim that the work in the Arsenal is mostly manual labor and that the Engineering School is degenerating into a trade school.

On the other hand, in the field of Mechanical Engineering the inferior quality of the equipment in the McKay laboratory is minimized on the supposition that in this department the emphasis is laid on the fundamental laws of engineering. The authorities declare that it makes no difference whether the engine is an antique steam affair or the latest turbine, because the laws of steam do not change. These two concepts, one theoretical and the other practical, can hardly be reconciled. If the Engineering School is to teach the fundamentals of metallurgy there is no need for investigating the latest device for molding guns. If it is to be a trade school the engines are hopelessly obsolete. But if there is to be a balance between theory and practice, there is no solution but to improve the equipment all around.

Belittling the need for having modern apparatus in the McKay laboratory seems to be a rationalization. Few will deny that it is better to study modern turbines including all the latest devices and principles than to study obsolete turbines. Graduates say that the turbines in use there now are 1910 models, constructed at a time when there was slight knowledge of them. Recent developments have made 1910 turbines obsolete.

The way out seems clear. If the Engineering School is to retain what prestige it still has must offer more attractive courses; it must improve its laboratories, and it must find new men to supplement the older members of the Faculty who have few teaching years left.