Page:Engineering as a vocation (IA cu31924004245605).pdf/98

 of the teacher is limited and fixed in amount, a deadening influence on most men, it is gratifying to meet so many high-minded, energetic teachers whose fondness for their work leads them to stay with it when everyone who meets them knows they are able to compete with the best men on the outside. The writer never visits an engineering school without experiencing the charm that holds men in the walls and believes that in many ways the rewards of the profession are greater for the high-minded, high-grade teacher than for the leading practising engineer. All success cannot be measured in financial terms. One amusing thought, however, is that all engineering teachers class themselves with the best of the active practitioners and thus count themselves very much underpaid, this having considerable to do with their lack of results.

The principal defect in engineering schools is the "inbreeding" caused by a too rapid growth of the engineering department and lack of sufficient funds to procure proper instructors. Many instructors are of the "God-to-be-pitied" class, so that a home is necessary for them. The pay in the grade of instructor is so low that a man who is well adapted to go out into the world and win a living in competition with other men in the same line of work will not consider it. The result is that numbers of young men graduate from a school in the spring and in the fall enter the same school