Engineering as a Profession.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4490, 18 November 1909, Page 4

Engineering as a Profession.

to ihese days of keen competition, premature specialisation may exercise a most disastrous influence on a man’s career. In an interesting article in a recent number of the “ Times ” on “ Engineering as a Profession,” great stress is laid on the folly of supposing that the wider the area of a man’s general ignorance the more effective will be his mastery of that small compartment of knowledge he endeavours to make bis own. “It is important,” says the writer, “ that no lad should be allowed to imagine that by choosing the engineering profession he will avoid having to go through the usual schoolroom study of the “ humanities ” before specialising in engineering. The demand and necessity for men with a higher standard of general education is becoming more and more apparent in the engineering profession. The lack of it m the past is still greatly felt, for the importance of this side of the question was overlooked in the eighties and nineties, wh°n so many young men set out„ to be “ electrical engineers.” An impression seemed to hare circulated that any dexterous handler of a slide rule, and of certain formulae, was fittedto call himself an electrical engineer, and to this day the electrical industry bears traces of the idea.” A few years ago the Institute of Civil Engineers appointed a Committee to inquire into “the “ best methods of education and training for alii classes of engineers.” This Committee recommended that the average engineering student should not leave school before the age of .17; that he should then take a three years’ course in an engineering college, and spend a further three years in engineering works. Such a course will give him not merely technical skill, but a knowledge of how to handle men, and to make his personality felt wherever he may he. And at the end of it he will be in a good position to begin the serious practical study of his profession. A young Btudent once asked a very famous engineer how long it would take him to learn the science of engineering, and received the paradoxical, but very wise, reply : “ If you’re a fool, about three years ; if you’re a fellow of average ability, say seven ; if you’re a genius, the whole of your life ; and at the end you won’t have exhausted the subject.”