Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/257

Rh at no cost, while the students have received credit at the university for "laboratory" work.

When the city of Akron established its municipal university, it was found that the university laboratory offered better facilities than that of the city chemist. In order to avoid expensive duplication, the university thereupon undertook to carry on in its laboratories the entire testing work of the city and established as one of its departments a bureau of city tests. Again the practical value of cooperation became apparent. Advanced university students in chemistry, instead of working at mere theoretical problems, were given actual city chemical testing work. The difference became at once apparent. A student who plodded through a "book problem" as drudgery, became an active, interested worker in the solution of a real food problem affecting the health of his community. The value of chemistry as an actual factor in life became apparent. At the same time, certain students were receiving experience which would later enable them to enter, well equipped, into a life calling.

When the city council, feeling the need for information, asked the engineering department of the university to undertake a survey of paving conditions in the city, cooperative students were called in to help in the work of inspection. When the need arose for a supervisor of city playgrounds, the physical director at the university was called upon to assume the position. Several of his sub-directors are city university students. Thus the city is beginning to regard the university as a laboratory to which it may, at any time, turn for technical advice and help. Through experience with problems thus offered, students are given the opportunity for training in the service of their community. They are taught to study and know city activities and interests—they become better citizens.

The state university offers free tuition to all who can take advantage of the opportunity. The city university also offers free tuition to its community, a practical training for life, and the advantage of a higher education at home. This latter fact opens up possibilities to hundreds of students who could never attend even a state university. A cooperative engineering student, who earns apprentice wages during his alternate two week shop periods and who has the privilege of living at home can secure an education and support himself at the same time.

From all parts of the country come inquiries from cities regarding the operation of a tax supported municipal university. Cleveland has considered a plan by which her students may receive free higher education at a municipal university formed by a coalition of her great privately endowed colleges. The day of the municipal university will come as inevitably as has that of the state university. Municipalities are already beginning to realize the possibilities of practical higher education as a civic investment.