EDUCATION, Technical. Technical edu cation is a very modern form of educational en terprise which is concerned with the training of men to make an organized practical applica tion of a knowledge of the principles of chemis try, physics (especially mechanics, heat and electricity), mathematics, astronomy and bacte riology to the design, construction and opera tion of machines, structures of all kinds, and the material conveniences of life. It aims to produce men of broad understanding of the field of applied science, who have insight, organizing power and leadership, not merely surveyors, draughtsmen or superintendents. Viewed in this light it is an important new phase of profes sional education (see EDUCATION, PROFESSION AL), always mindful of the need of increased production, but distinguished from industrial education (see EDUCATION, INDUSTRIAL), which is designed primarily to prepare men and women for maximum production with a mini mum expenditure of time and human energy. Broadly speaking, technical education is engi neering education, but the term engineering now includes a variety of divisions which would have been entirely incomprehensible to the founders of the early schools of applied sci ence; it applies rather to the expert direction of organizations which utilize the forces and materials of nature through large combinations of human units than to the actual labor of pro duction. In addition to the usual branches of engineering— civil, electrical, mechanical, min ing and architectural — there must now be in cluded chemical, failway, marine, ceramic, sani tary, textile, agricultural, metallurgical and aeronautic engineering.
The scheme of technical education for all of these specialized engineering professions pro vides for firm grounding of the student in the processes of the fundamental pure sciences ap propriate to the specialization, whether chemi cal, ceramic, textile or aeronautic. In the usual four-years technological course leading to a Bachelor's degree this is accomplished largely in the first two years, in which instruction in mathematics, chemistry, physics, surveying, etc., is given,, sometimes by basing the two years engineering curriculum upon two years of liberal arts, as in the University of Missouri. In the case of five-years engineering courses or six-years combination courses the fundamentals may occupy the first two years or the first three years as in the Columbia School of Mines, in which the three-years technological courses in mining, engineering and chemistry are based upon the three years of study in a collegiate or scientific school. After these fundamental sciences and additional instruction in English, economics, politics, etc., the curriculum of the last two or three or four years of technical courses follows divergent lines of study pre paratory to the practice of specialized engineer ing professions, which aim to meet correspond ing specialized demands arising out of the un paralleled development of mechanical, struc tural and industrial needs of a nation of 110, 000,000, complex in its interests, rich in its re sources and impatient in its development.
The first school of engineering in the United States was the Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti tute (q.v.), founded at Troy, N. Y., by Stephen van Rensselaer in 1824, as a School of Theoret ical and Applied Science, to furnish "instruc tion in the application of science to the common purposes of life." No further provision of the
kind was made until 1847 when the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale and the Lawrence Sci entific School at Harvard were founded. In the same year the University of Michigan voted to establish a course in civil engineering. These four schools, concerned almost exclusively with civil engineering, were the only schools of the kind opened before the Civil War. After the passage of the Morrill act in 1862 (see EDUCA TION, AGRICULTURAL) many States accepted the provision of the act and proceeded to organize new schools of agriculture and the mechanic arts, or to add these types of technical educa tion to existing schools. Many of the State universities, like Illinois Wisconsin and Cali fornia, which now offer strong and well equipped instruction in technical lines received very large impulse from the Morrill act. The great expansion of construction and industry after the Civil War caused the rapid multiplica tion of engineering schools. The four schools of 1860 increased to 17 in 1870, 41 in 1871, 70 in 1872, 85 in 1880 and 126 in 1917; the grad uates numbering 100 in 1870 reached 4,300 in 1917. Besides these schools there are 43 other institutions giving more or less attention to engineering work, either in the form of "two years of engineering° or of single courses like civil engineering in connection with other curric ula. Of the 126 schools of 1917, 46 were con nected with land grant colleges, 44 were pro fessional schools in universities, 20 were at tached to colleges and 16 were independent. Midway between the group of technical schools and industrial schools are to be found certain excellent institutions giving more or less tech nical or engineering education to men and women, for example, Pratt Institute in Brook lyn, Lewis Institute in Chicago and the Cogs well Polytechnic Institute in San Francisco.
Following the period of rapid multiplication of technical institutions from 1870 to 1890 came a period of standardization of requirements for admission and for graduation, for it was clear that technical education was not a simple prob lem with an easy and uniform solution, espe cially if the engineer was to 'become the profes sional equal of trained lawyers and doctors. The formation of the Society for the Promo tion of Engineering Education in 1893 and the organization of the joint committee on 'engi neering education of the national engmeenng societies in 1908 promoted the process of eleva tion and standardization of curricula. By 1917 practically all of the first class technical schools required at least four years of high school work for admission and at least four years of colle giate work for the specialized degree, whether that of B.S. in some division of engineering, as Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineer ing (B.S. in M. E.), Bachelor of Civil Engi neering (B.C.E.) or Civil Engineer (C.E.). With few exceptions, e.g., Massachusetts In stitute of Technology, the technical schools, like other colleges, receive their students out of the great system of public secondary schools by certificate rather than by examination. Stu dents thus received are given approximately the same work during the first year with later dif ferentiation as discussed above. The extent of this specialization is illustrated in the curricula offered at the University of Illinois and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.