Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/165

 The state supported university as now existing in the middle west is to be the most efficient school of higher education the world has ever seen. It cannot help being so. As its cost increases, those who pay the taxes will demand that results be shown and the struggle between old ideals, higher learning and the practical demands of the busy world will cause such a reaction upon reaction that it cannot help producing the real mixture of the ideal and the practical which is so much needed to-day. The by-products of the establishment of a department like the Wisconsin university extension division are perhaps of greater value than the department itself. The professor comes in contact with the needs of the citizen and tempers his theory to practice and the citizen learns to respect the professor—and demands more like him.

Industrial Education

Industrial education has been placed under the supervision of an industrial education board to be composed of three employers of labor and three skilled employees, the state superintendent of public instruction, the dean of the extension division of the university and the dean of the college of engineering at the university. Hereafter every child employed between the ages of fourteen and sixteen will have to attend school for five hours a week out of the time of the employer (chapter 660, laws