It is the purpose of this paper to make a critical study of the entrance requirements and curricula of a number of typical, first-rate institutions of higher education in the hope that the study will either confirm the wisdom of the present academic policies of the Naval Academy or indicate desirable changes.
ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS
Entrance requirements of the institutions under consideration are tabulated below.
TABLE 1 | ||||||
School and Lower Age Limit | Admits by | Total Min. Credits | Required Units | Election Units | Required Subjects | Remarks |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 17 years | Exam | 15 | 13 | 2 | Math. 4; English 3; Physics 1; Languages 3; History 1; Chemistry 1. | For electives record of passing grades is accepted in lieu of exams. |
Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 17 years | Exam, or certificate | 14 ½ | 10 ½ | 4 | Math. 31; English 3; Physics or Chemistry 1; Languages 2; History 1. |
|
Stevens Institute of Technology 17 years | Exam, or certificate and substantiating Exam. in Math | 14 ½ | 12 | 2 ½ | Math. 4; English 3; Physics 1; Languages 2; History 1; Chemistry 1. |
|
Cornell Arts and Sciences 16 years | Exam, or certificate | 15 | 11 ½ or 12 | 3 or 3 ½ | Arts Course Math. 21; English 3; Languages 5; History 1. Science Course Math. 4; English 3; Languages 4; History 1. |
|
Cornell Engineering. 16 years | Exam, or certificate | 15 | 11 or 12 | 3 or 4 | Math. 4; English 3; Languages 3 or 4; History 1. |
|
U. S. Naval Academy. 16 years. | Exam, or certificate and substantiating Exam. | 15 | 9 | 6 | Math. 3; English 3; Physics 1; History 1; 1 from group of sciences, mathematical subjects, and languages. |
|
University of Michigan—College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts. 16 years. | Exam, or certificate. | 15 | 8 | 7 | Math. 2; English 3; Ancient or Modern Languages 2; Science 1. |
|
University of Virginia—College of Arts and Sciences. 16 years. | Exam, or certificate. | 15 | 6 ½ | 8 ½ | Math. 2 ½; English 3; History 1. |
|
Stanford University Arts and Sciences. No age limit. | Exam, or certificate. (aptitude test is given.) | 15 | 2 | 13 | English 2. | Prospective applicants are advised to acquire 4 units in English, 3 or 4 in one or more modern languages, 1 in history and 3 in science. |
Stanford University Engineering, No age limit. | Engineering course at Stanford consists of 2 years of graduate work. Bachelor's degree or the equivalent is required for admittance to the course. |
NOTES
Cornell Catalogue—Remarks relative to Engineering Courses: "Since the work in the regular four years' course in this college is largely technical, it is desirable that the student devote more time to his course in order to broaden his training. This may be done by devoting five or six years."
W.P.I. Catalogue—"A broad training including the ancient languages and history is of advantage to any student who undertakes the work of the Institute."
M.I.T. Catalogue—"The student intending to enter the Institute should bear in mind that the broader his intellectual training and the more extensive his general acquirements, the greater will be the advantage he may expect to gain."
CONCLUSIONS AS TO ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS
The substantiating examinations, upon the results of which about 50 per cent of the candidates presenting certificates for admission to the Naval Academy are rejected, make the entrance requirements to the Academy more difficult than those of any of the representative institutions listed above except Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stevens Institute of Technology, and the Stanford School of Engineering. The character of the required subjects for the Academy represents roughly an average of that for technical schools and that for colleges of arts and sciences. The Academy requires less mathematics than the former and more than the latter. The Academy does not require a modern language as do most of the other institutions.
On the whole it appears that incoming midshipmen are at least as well prepared academically as the rank and file of students starting in as freshmen at colleges or at technical schools.
PHYSICAL CONDITION
A rigid physical examination is a special requirement for admission to the Naval Academy. As men in good health are known to be more alert mentally than ones laboring under physical handicaps, the incoming fourth classmen should be potentially better scholars than are average college freshmen.
MATURITY
The lower age limit for admission to the Naval Academy is the same as is in effect at most of the colleges and technical schools under consideration. There is no upper age limit at the latter institutions, however, whereas the upper limit for the Naval Academy is twenty years. It seems probable, therefore, that the average college freshman is slightly more mature than the average fourth-class midshipman but not markedly so.
DURATION OF COURSE
All of the institutions under consideration except the Naval Academy and the Stanford School of Engineering offer courses of four academic years leading to a bachelor's degree or to an engineering degree. The latter school accepts only college graduates and its course may be considered in conjunction with a college course, the combination consisting of six academic years of work. In addition to its regular four-year engineering courses Cornell offers five- and six-year courses leading to engineering degrees. The Naval Academy course comprises four academic years and four summers of three months each. For purposes of comparison it may be considered as made up of five academic years of work if it be assumed that full use is made of the summers.
CHARACTER OF COURSE AT COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
In general, to qualify for a bachelor's degree a student at a college of arts and sciences must have successfully completed 120 semester-hours of academic work, partly in required subjects and partly in elective ones. A semester-hour is defined as one hour in class room and two hours of preparation weekly throughout half of the academic year. Three hours of laboratory work ordinarily count as one hour of recitation or of attendance at lecture.
Most of the colleges specify a large portion of the student's work for the first two years of the course and allow greater latitude to the individual in selecting his subjects during the remaining two years. It is required in general, however, that a student shall devote his major attention to one group of studies during the last two years of his course.
It is the intention, apparently, to give the student enough latitude in selecting studies to permit him to follow lines dictated by his interests and by his abilities but to exercise over him sufficient supervision to insure that no matter what his major study may be he will have acquired upon graduation a well-rounded education.
Although colleges are by no means standardized as to their requirements and curricula, the College of Arts and Sciences of Cornell University is fairly typical; and the course offered by that institution is described in some detail in order to present more concrete information than is contained in the above remarks.
Prior to graduation, a student at Cornell must complete six hours in each of the first two groups listed below and six hours in each of five of the remaining six groups:
- English and public speaking
- Foreign languages
- History
- Astronomy, chemistry, and physics
- Biology and geology
- Philosophy and psychology, including educational psychology
- Economics and government
- Mathematics
Before the end of the sophomore year each student is required to complete, in addition to the first two groups, at least eighteen of the required number of hours in five of the remaining six groups. Of these hours, the student is required to take at least twelve, and advised to take more, in his freshman year.
The student is permitted to select with faculty advice the remainder of the sixty hours comprising his first two years' work.
The subjects from which choice may be made cover an extremely wide field and include modern and ancient languages, mathematics, history, natural sciences, music, and many other studies.
During the junior and senior years, the student must complete at least twenty hours of work in one of the following groups:
- The classics
- Botany
- Chemistry
- Economics
- English and public speaking
- French and Italian
- Geology and physical geography
- German
- History and government
- Mathematics
- Philosophy and education
- Philosophy and psychology
- Physics
- Animal biology
- Psychology and education
- Spanish and Italian
The remaining forty hours of work of the last two years are selected by the students with faculty advice from a wide list of subjects.
CHARACTER OF COURSE AT TECHNICAL SCHOOL
In general, technical schools (except graduate schools) give practically the same course to all freshmen, the students starting to specialize at the beginning of the sophomore year. When the course to be followed has been designated by the student he is permitted very little discretion as to selection of subjects even during the last two years. For example, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology mechanical-engineering students are permitted to elect only two hours of professional study and eight hours of general study during the four years. The general studies may be selected from a wide range of subjects including languages, English, social, political, and business subjects, history, and music.
The amount of time devoted to cultural studies at four-year engineering schools is woefully small. For most courses at M.I.T. it is only fourteen hours, six of which are on English and history and eight of which are on general studies as listed above. Within recent years M.I.T. has established a new and interesting course entitled general engineering. In addition to the usual fourteen hours of cultural study, it contains six hours of English and history, six hours of economics, and thirty hours of general or professional study to be elected by the student.
The mechanical engineering course at Worcester Polytechnic Institute contains the following cultural studies:
English, six hours
Modern languages, eleven hours
Argument, one and one-half hours
Economics, three hours
Political science, three hours
Business law, one hour
Total, twenty-five and one-half hours
The mechanical engineering course at Cornell requires only five hours of cultural study, two in English, and three in economics; but students are permitted to elect six additional hours of such study.
The Stevens Institute of Technology differs markedly from the usual type of engineering school. It offers only one course which is of four years and which is designed to fit the students to enter any field of engineering. At this institution unusual stress is laid on general cultural study of which twenty-eight hours are required, and the basic principles of various engineering branches are dealt with rather than the advanced practice in any single branch.
In addition to the regular academic work students at most engineering schools are required to attend one or more summer sessions which are devoted to practical shop or field work.
Engineering students are required to undertake about eighteen hours of work weekly as against fifteen for college students.
CHARACTER OF COURSE AT THE NAVAL ACADEMY
The academic year at the Naval Academy is about two weeks longer than that at most institutions of higher education, the reason for this condition being that fewer and shorter vacations are granted at the Academy. Midshipmen are required to take sixteen to seventeen hours of work weekly, a standard below that of technical schools and above that of colleges. The time for preparation for each hour of recitation is nominally less at the Academy. Actually the regularity required of midshipmen in observing study periods more than offsets their brevity.
The Naval Academy four-year course may be classified as shown in Table 2.
TABLE 2 | ||||
Character of Study | Subject | Semester hours | Department having cognizance | Remarks |
Cultural | Eng. Comp., Liter., Public Speaking | 6 | English | Also, evening public-speaking sessions |
History, Naval | 3 | English |
| |
U.S. History | 3 | English |
| |
Mod. European History | 2 | English | Also evening lectures | |
Mod. Languages | 14 | Mod. Languages |
| |
Hygiene | 0 | Hygiene | 10 Friday evening periods | |
Leadership International Law | 1 ½ | Seamanship and Flight Tactics |
| |
Total Cultural | 29 ½ |
|
| |
Fundamental Sciences | Mathematics | 22 | Mathematics |
|
Mechanics | 5 | Mathematics |
| |
Chemistry | 4 | Electrical Eng. and Physics |
| |
Physics | 8 | Electrical Eng. and Physics |
| |
Descriptive Geom. and Mechanical Drawing | 4 | Engineering and Aeronautics | Strictly speaking the drawing is not a science; but as it is taught with the descriptive geometry the two subjects are classified together. | |
Total fundamental sciences | 43 |
|
| |
Professional non-engineering | Navigation | 10 | Navigation |
|
Seamanship Flight tactics Regulations Communications Signals Military Law Aviation history | 7 ½ | S. and F.T. |
| |
Ordnance Gunnery Ballistics Fire Control Bombing | 9 | Ordnance and Gunnery |
| |
Total professional non-engineering | 26 ½ |
|
| |
Professional engineering | Mechanical Drawing | 3 | E. and A. |
|
| Mechanisms Engineering Materials and Processes | 3 | E. and A. |
|
| Boilers, Recip. Engines, Auxiliaries, Naval Construction, Aircraft Construction | 7 | E. and A. | A very brief course in aerodynamics is included under this heading. |
| Thermo-dynamics, Turbines, Internal-Combustion and Aviation Engines | 6 | E. and A. |
|
| Electricity, D.C. | 6 | E.E. and P. |
|
| Electricity, A.C., Radio | 6 | E.E. and P. |
|
| Total professional engineering | 31 |
|
|
SUMMARY
Cultural studies 29 1/2 hours plus evening sessions equivalent to 1 1/2 hours.
Fundamental sciences 43 hours.
Professional non-engineering 26 1/2hours.
Professional engineering 31 hours.
130 hours.
In addition to following the above curriculum, midshipmen are required to take part in five practical drills or exercises weekly throughout each academic year. Moreover four summers of three months each are devoted to practical work, one summer being spent at the Academy and the remaining three on cruises on seagoing vessels. The cruises may be considered as major laboratory sessions. Aside from the great professional benefits derived from them, they enable the midshipmen to acquire knowledge of and experience in human relations. Such an opportunity of observing at close range the activities, habits, and mental attitude of the class of "labor" which the midshipmen are to control in later life is of inestimable value. In the writer's opinion if colleges and technical schools would require their students to use the summer periods in corresponding endeavors, the products of those institutions would be broader individuals better fitted to meet the problems of life.
TRENDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN LAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
When the writer was considering going to college about twenty-five years ago, he had acquired an excellent secondary school education including mathematics through trigonometry; English composition and literature; physics; physiology; chemistry; three years of French; one year of Latin; and Babylonian, Greek, Roman, English, and U. S. history. He was shocked to discover, therefore, that he could not get into a first-rate college of arts and sciences without condition because of deficiency in the classics. Today the entrance requirements are far different. Insistence on the classics has been dropped and greater recognition has been given to the sciences.
The curricula of colleges have undergone changes, also. The study of classics is no longer required and much greater attention is being given to economics and to social and natural sciences. The colleges have recognized the demands of the business world by injecting into their curricula courses in commercial subjects. In brief the tendency has been to get down a little nearer to cases.
During the same period the technical schools have seen great developments in the scope of the engineering professions. Such branches as radio and aeronautics have grown from practically nothing to enormous proportions. The motor car and the internal combusion engine have demanded a place in the sun. Scientific management has blossomed into a separate engineering profession. Sanitation, city planning, road building, and many other major problems have placed additional burdens upon the technical schools. In the face of all of these technical developments, attention has been called to the desirability of broadening the education of the students by giving them instruction in economics, politics and government, history, literature, argumentation and debate, finance, business law, and what not.
Urged on the one hand to increase the scope of technical instruction and on the other to broaden the courses by the addition of general and cultural studies, the schools find themselves in a dilemma.
As the earlier of the two pressures was that calling for more technical work, about ten or fifteen years ago the schools embarked on a program of extension and multiplication of purely engineering courses.
It has been only within recent years that the demand has become insistent from industry and particularly from engineers that broader gauge men be turned out by the technical schools. The engineers have become weary of seeing the lion's share of responsible administrative positions in industry go to lawyers, business men, financiers, and salesmen, with most of the technical men relegated to the drawing boards. Engineers are beginning to realize that this state of affairs is due not to prejudice against their profession but rather to their own narrowness. Many of them lay this deficiency at the doors of the technical schools.
These schools, finding themselves decidedly on the defensive, are reacting from the idea of cramming into the heads of students a mass of highly specialized and exclusively material facts and figures and of leaving to their own initiative the acquisition of knowledge of life and of events.
The following quotation from the inaugural address of Dr. H. N. Davis, the newly installed president of Stevens Institute of Technology, is indicative of the modern trend of thought, though educators are by no means unanimous in advocating, as does Dr. Davis, the unified technical course rather than a multiplicity of courses:
Why waste time in an engineering school learning details, descriptions of processes and of machines, tricks of technique of hand or brain, or even miscellaneous facts, all of which, in so far as one wants them at all, can be learned far more effectively on the job? Why not devote one's time in the school in learning what one may never have another chance to learn, namely fundamental principles, and how to think? And always remember that ignorance, plus willingness to learn, plus ability to learn, is a far better basis on which to establish appropriate and satisfactory human relationships with one's own organization, and with the world in general, than is "knowing a lot of things, even if all of them are so."
My conception of the educational opportunity which the undergraduate engineering schools of today would do well to offer their students must be, by now, fairly clear to you. There will not be a multiplicity of more or less specialized undergraduate curricula, each designed to train for some one variety of engineering career. There will be one curriculum. And in this curriculum the emphasis will be placed on the basic disciplines that underlie all engineering careers; there will be plenty of mathematics, physics, and chemistry; there will be mechanics in all its branches, including the deplorably few fundamental principles that are yet known as to the nature and serviceableness of the materials of engineering; stress will be laid on thermodynamics and in particular on the two laws of thermodynamics and on how to use them as a vital part of one's thinking; there will be electro-dynamics, with emphasis on the fundamental principles of both direct and alternating current phenomena; at least a foundation will be laid in hydro and aerodynamics; and there will be thorough training in the various arts of mensuration, and in the still greater art of feeling instinctively the appropriate degree of skepticism as to the results. Many useful facts will be automatically stored away in the student's mind if his teachers will merely adhere strictly to the practice of basing every problem or examination question on real data. But there will be a great dearth of survey courses designed primarily to impart facts. Throughout, the method of attack, rather than the answer, would be the significant thing.
This curriculum will also emphasize the nontechnical, purely human side of an engineer's life, by offering an appropriate amount of history and literature, of economics and government, of psychology, of philosophy and ethics, and even of music and art, and by stressing the economic and human sides of engineering itself in every available way.
And finally, this curriculum will be such as to develop in each individual student, to at least an acceptable degree, the various arts of self-expression and of communication, including not only the sketching pencil and the drawing pen, without which so many engineers are hopelessly inarticulate, but particularly the written and the spoken word.
To sum up, the technical schools are now going through a transitional period with a decided trend toward liberalization. The goal toward which they are headed seems to be a four-year course consisting largely of general cultural studies and in which stress is laid on fundamentals rather than on advanced technique. Probably the geniuses as well as the extremely unimaginative students will find need for a year or two of postgraduate technical study to fit the former to follow in the footsteps of the Steinmetzes, the Einsteins, and the Edisons, and the latter to assume the burdens of routine computation and detail design.
Now what has been happening at the Naval Academy during this last twenty-five years of material development? Have we kept pace with the advance in technique? If so has this been accomplished by sacrificing general and cultural study? Are the graduates better informed technically or not and are they wiser and better balanced?
The answers lie in the fact that progress both in improvement of the quality and scope of technical instruction and in liberalization of the course as a whole has been such as to justify great pride on the part of those in charge of directing the policies of the Academy during this period.
Twenty-five years ago the instruction in navigation, seamanship, languages, and mathematics was excellent as to both quality and scope. The same cannot be said truthfully, however, for most of the rest of the course. We taught the construction and details of steam boilers, engines, and auxiliaries, but not thermodynamics. In other words, we taught the details of marine engineering but not the science upon which they were based. We taught the shape, size, and nomenclature of parts of guns and torpedoes but gave little attention to ballistics and fire control. We gave an entirely unsatisfactory course in the theory of electricity and magnetism, but went into great detail as to the construction of motors, dynamos, and distribution systems. Our course in English was confined to rhetoric and composition and that in history consisted of a brief and unsatisfactory treatment of American naval history. Such fundamental sciences as chemistry and physics were given scant attention. Worst of all, we used, almost exclusively, extremely amateurish textbooks written by and for the Navy.
Today conditions are far different. In the first place our entrance requirements have been changed so as to bring them into line with the practice followed at first-rate colleges and technical schools. Prospective candidates for the Academy may now complete their high- or preparatory-school courses instead of interrupting them to attend cramming schools. Moreover, the character of the subjects included in the entrance requirements is now such as to insure our getting men well up to college entrance standards in general education.
The change in entrance requirements has permitted a great expansion in our English and history courses. Midshipmen take now English composition and literature, public speaking, and general naval history as well as United States and modern European history. In connection with the course in European history, a series of lectures is given by prominent and able visiting lecturers.
Of the fundamental sciences, chemistry and physics are taught much better than they were twenty-five years ago. More stress is laid on principles, less on pure memory.
In electricity standard textbooks have been adopted in which the main concern is with the theory. The study of construction details has gone largely by the board.
Thermodynamics, the basis of all heat engineering, has been added to the course at the expense of the study of details of construction of marine engines. Such study still exists to no small degree, however, as may be seen from the table given earlier.
In the study of ordnance, more attention is paid than formerly to fire control and ballistics, less to memorizing the sizes, shapes, and names of torpedo and gun parts; and the large, red, and totally obsolete book familiar to students of a quarter of a century ago has gone into the discard.
The above improvements in the engineering and professional courses, together with the omission of two review months yearly, have made time available for the addition of such subjects as alternating-current electricity, radio, heavy-oil and gas engines, oil burning, airplane construction and ordnance, flight tactics, and communications.
The resistance to the adoption of standard textbooks for subjects not strictly naval is disappearing with the result that pedagogical tendencies in colleges and technical schools come quickly to the attention of Naval Academy authorities.
The time-honored method of teaching technical subjects by omitting fundamental considerations in favor of requiring the memorizing of details of machine parts is finding less and less favor.
There are three ways in which to educate an engineer or technician. He may be instructed thoroughly in the fundamental sciences and in the theory upon which his profession is based, the mastery of details of completed machines, systems, and structures being left for accomplishment by the individual after graduation. The second method of education is to cover fundamentals and theory less thoroughly, perhaps, and to stress knowledge of completed arrangements and systems, operating procedure, and the like. The third method is to ignore theory and to attempt to attain thoroughness in details. The last method is exemplified in the trade school; it may be all right for making locomotive engineers, motormen, and "practical" technicians of all kinds, but rarely or never will it produce a man of vision, a leader rather than a follower. The second method may turn out able men but it is uneconomical of time and in a four-year course leaves little or no opportunity for imparting other than technical knowledge. The time devoted to construction details may be almost wasted especially in such branches as Diesel engineering and aeronautics in which the student's so-called "practical" knowledge may be obsolete by the time of his graduation. He may then find that he has been chasing a will-o'-the-wisp. In the opinion of the writer the first method is the ideal one. It is economical; it tends to develop originality, interest, and ability to think; and it permits inclusion in a four-year course of much general study calculated to broaden the student and to give him vision and knowledge of life and of events.
LIBERALIZATION OF ACADEMY COURSE
Within the last few years the Naval Academy has been the subject of attack from responsible sources on the grounds of the narrowness of its curriculum. Unfortunately the critics lacked the knowledge or the inclination to suggest concrete changes in the course which would accomplish the end desired without sacrificing professional study to such an extent as to make it impossible for the Academy to fulfill its mission. Whether as a result of the criticisms or not, however, the Academy has liberalized its course to no small degree, as has been pointed out already in this paper. Moreover, there has been official recognition of the shortcomings of the general education given midshipmen; witness the establishment of the general line course at the Postgraduate School intended to give greater general information and culture to selected graduates. For the purpose of accomplishing the same results for all midshipmen, proposals have been made from time to time to extend the Academy course to five or six years. Such suggestions have wilted in the face of many practical difficulties.
If the importance of general education in the equipment of a naval officer be recognized, the question naturally arises, "Is it practicable to give such education without extending the course and without cutting down unduly on technical study?" The writer feels that it is not only practicable to do so but extremely desirable, and he is prepared to make concrete suggestions looking to this end. His suggestions are based on the adoption of the first method of teaching engineering subjects, that is by giving fundamentals and basic theories almost to the exclusion of details of construction. The Academy is especially well adapted to such a method, for its course includes three summer cruises during which midshipmen may acquire a great deal of practical knowledge of engineering installations provided they have first mastered the theory upon which the designs were based. When they graduate they should not be greenhorns as operating engineers, therefore, even though drastic cuts have been made in their academic study of machines, parts, and details.
Having the above considerations in mind, the writer feels that it would not be unreasonable to make the following cuts:
Reduce the time assigned to mechanical drawing, mechanisms, engineering processes, boilers, engines, naval construction, turbines, and aircraft construction by seven term (semester) hours.
Reduce the time assigned to physics and A.C. electricity by four term-hours.
Reduce the time assigned to mathematics by five term-hours.
Recent rearrangements in the course in mathematics will make available two hours without curtailment of the course. Three more hours may be saved by dropping differential equations, a study of great value but somewhat too advanced for the needs of the Academy.
The above deletions would make available a total of sixteen term-hours which could be assigned to general studies. A tentative schedule for the use of this time is offered as follows:
Economics, three hours.
Government, three hours.
History of South and Central America, Pan-American relations, three hours.
Biology, three hours.
Public speaking, argumentation and debate, two hours.
Comparative literature, two hours.
Although the writer sees no valid objection to the ultimate adoption of the above drastic changes, he believes that it would be wise to introduce them gradually by making initial cuts of five hours in drawing and machinery, two hours in A.C. electricity, and two hours in mathematics, and by using on the first three courses listed above the nine hours thus obtained.
Criticism of the above suggestions may be made on the ground that their adoption might make the engineering instruction at the Academy too theoretical. The answer is that the only effective approach to the practical in engineering is via the theoretical.
In conclusion the writer wishes to disclaim a desire to offer unconstructive criticisms of the curriculum and policies of this great school. He has ventured to make the above radical suggestions only because of his conviction that their adoption would result in an improvement of the mental equipment of those graduated.