Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/98

92 opens the main problem before the institution, namely, whether it shall conduct several great laboratories for research or shall cooperate with existing institutions. There is doubtless much to be said on both sides. It appears from a series of articles by leading scientific men, published in recent issues of Science, that opinion is pretty equally divided. Some hold that the resources of the institution can be best utilized in the establishment of laboratories at Washington or elsewhere, while others think that for the present at least assistance should be given where it appears to be most needed. There is in either case some danger of too great centralization of power and of interference with individual initiative, and with agencies supported or likely to be supported from other sources. As a labor saving invention may at first disorganize a trade, though in the end for the benefit of society, so the great resources of the Carnegie Institution must be used with discretion if there is not to be a temporary inhibition of other agencies. When compared with any similar agency, the funds of the Carnegie Institution are bewilderingly large. Thus in his presidential address before the British Association, Professor Dewar stated that the Carnegie Institution will dispose in a year of as much money as the members of the Royal Institution have expended in a century on its purely scientific work. The other institution most like that endowed by Mr. Carnegie is the Smithsonian, whose endowment was about equal to the annual income of the Carnegie Institution. Compared, however, with certain other agencies, for example, the U. S. Geological Survey, with its appropriation of $1,300,000, the funds of the Carnegie Institution are limited, and it is evident that they must be used economically, without any attempt to rival the government or universities, but doing what can be done only by an institution so unique in its possibilities.

first report of President Butler to the trustees of Columbia University exhibits the benefit of a university president's being from the outset a student of educational problems. The domestic economy of the university is reviewed in a masterly fashion, and questions of wide-reaching importance for the development of the educational institutions of the country are discussed by an acknowledged leader. The most pressing problem is the relation of the college to the university, and here President Butler outlines a policy which while radical appears to be in the line of advance. The plan of Harvard, Johns Hopkins and to a certain extent of Columbia has been to require a college degree for entrance to the professional schools. Students now enter the freshman class of these universities at the age of eighteen or nineteen. If they follow a four years' course at college and a three or four years' course in the professional school, they are on the average twenty-five years of age before they begin actual work with a period of apprenticeship before them. This is wrong both economically and educationally. Only the sons of the rich, who accept parental support when they should themselves be heads of families, are able to enter professional careers. The actual practice essential to professional work is postponed until the age of plasticity is passed.

President Eliot has long advocated a college course of three years, making it at the same time elective, so that a certain amount of work preparatory to the professions can be done at college. Columbia University admits seniors to its schools of medicine and law, permitting them to count part of their professional work toward the bachelor's degree. President Butler now