Page:Engineering as a vocation (IA cu31924004245605).pdf/90

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ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION

for men who are practising engineering and have taken this additional work in residence. This degree of Doctor of Engineering to be also an honorary degree to be conferred on engineers eminent in their profession who have been in active practice not less than twenty-five years. Degrees are academic affairs and the younger engineers are just as well off with a diploma or almost any kind of a certificate setting forth the extent of the engineering education received. Older men prize degrees as an attest of standing. With teachers the degree is purely a matter of business and engineering should have degrees like any other university subject.

A great many men seek degrees and prize them so the way the matter often works out was called to the attention of the writer some time ago. A young chap who was a "shark" at mathematics and all the purely theoretical subjects and purely scientific subjects in his course, graduated from a high-class engineering school and tried to work as an engineer. To explain things that happened it is well to say that among many of his classmates he was known as Kitty, the name being intended to designate something real nice and dainty. He was a positive failure as a practising engineer. He lacked tact. He lacked real horse-sense. He made people feel as if he might be soiled if touched or might cry if spoken to rudely. He lacked accuracy in most of the common-place work he was given