Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 81.djvu/107

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the state universities. In the end the university is likely to become a center of civic pride, providing higher education locally and coordinating the libraries, museums and other institutions of the city.

The University of Cincinnati in June dedicated not only its fine engineering building, but also a gymnasium, the two buildings having been erected by the city at a cost of $550,000. At the same time President Dabney was able to announce that gifts from private citizens were the largest in number and the greatest in amount—about $250,000—ever received. There is no reason why private citizens and alumni should not give as liberally to a municipal or state university as to a private corporation, and we may expect to see a still more remarkable growth of state supported institutions as the alumni increase in numbers, in wealth and in power.

One of the advantages of having local universities rather than only a central state institution is illustrated by the cooperative engineering course of the University of Cincinnati, from which students were this year for the first time graduated, and it is an interesting fact that the first experiment of this character should have been initiated by the first municipal university. Owing to the initiative and skill of the dean of the college, Professor Herman Schneider, arrangements have been made by which students work alternate weeks at the university and at commercial shops. The theory is taught at the university and the practise is obtained in the manufacturing plants. Students are paid for their work in the shops at the same rate as other men doing the same work, and no inconvenience is caused by the plan of alternate weeks as the men work continually in the shops in two relays. Students can thus practically support themselves while they are taking the engineering courses in the university. They probably learn more in the shops than by practical courses which the universities could arrange, and the shops obtain superior