Page:Engineering as a vocation (IA cu31924004245605).pdf/83

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ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION
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periods may be deducted, that is, only the time placed in the schedule may be counted. It will be seen then that there is not a great difference. The work, however, at all mining schools is much heavier than the work at other schools. There is one item, however, to be fully considered in all statements regarding work at all colleges and universities. Very few students actually spend two hours in preparation for one hour of lecture or recitation. The children in the grammar schools put in five hours per day for five days and many of them spend two hours per day in home work, thus getting in thirty-five hours per week. Very few men who have gone through the average schools have considered themselves hard worked, except while in school, saying in later years that they could easily have carried more work if compelled to do so. Eighteen hours class and six hours laboratory, a total of twenty-one catalogue hours, is not too much to ask of engineering students, and if this were done and a longer course given, a more general education would make them better men and increase their opportunity to earn a living after leaving school.

The fact that students are required at many institutions to select a specialty at the end of their Freshman year, before they have a realizing sense of what the profession is, has been referred to. This happens for several reasons. In the first place there is a certain amount of advertising done