The New Student's Reference Work/Technical Schools

Tech'nical Schools. This term embraces all institutions whose object is to prepare its students directly for some particular career or vocation as opposed to those giving a so-called liberal education. Usually, however, it is restricted to that class of schools especially devoted to the investigation and teaching of industrial and mechanical arts and sciences, as civil, mechanical, mining, electrical, chemical and sanitary engineering, architecture, draughting etc. They usually are institutions of college or university grade, to which the titles of engineering schools, institutes of technology, polytechnic institutes and schools of applied science are variously given. The great majority confer only the degree of bachelor of science at the end of the four years' couise and the professional degrees of C.E. and M.E. only after the completion of at least a year's graduate work in residence and three years of successful professional work. They have arisen almost invariably in response to the industrial demands of the district in which they were founded, as, for instance, the Colorado School of Mines. They practically are a development of the last half-century. On the basis of control there are three types of technical schools in the United States: those founded by private individuals and relying for support mainly upon private endowment, e.g. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, N. Y.; those forming a department of some college or university (as in the engineering departments of the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania etc.) and usually sharing in the common resources of the university of which they form a part; and those supported largely if not entirely by state government expense, e.g. New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge perhaps is the most famous technical school in America, but many excellent ones are distributed through the whole country. A few of the most prominent, in addition to those already mentioned, are those connected with Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Leland Stanford and California Universities, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Armour Institute of Chicago, Michigan School of Mines and Case School of Applied Science of Cleveland.