LIBERAL VS. TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

Who has not heard some proud possessor of an A.B. degree complain a few months after Commencement how little he really knew of the practical side of life, and how little preparation his four years of liberal education had given him to win out in the competition of the work-a-day world? Perchance to him the graduate of the down-town commercial school has seemed better fitted for the struggle. Again, who has not heard the engineer graduate of some well-known technical school, successful and perhaps well up the ladder in his particular field of mechanics -- electricity, automobiles, or what not -- regret that he did not take four years for a college education when he still had the chance? His very success in his technical field rankles in his heart, for he sees the highest rung of the ladder on which he has started not far beyond his reach. A few advances will put him at the top, and there he must stay, unable to step over to another ladder whose height towers far above his own. His college-bred contemporaries may have climbed their ladders more slowly at the beginning, but for them there is the possibility of further progress, while he has reached the limit of his restricted field.

At the same time there come the complaints from the leaders in our industrial organizations that this country is not producing men of a calibre sufficiently high to fill the topmost positions. Only last month the president of a large corporation published the statement that $10,000 and $25,000 a year positions were appearing more rapidly than men able to fill them.

In the face of these facts how can we compare the liberal with the technical education? For some men one is best, for some the other. But for the man who aspires to the foremost rank in the community, the one is the complement of the other. College gives the background--call it culture, breadth of interest, power of comprehension or what you will; but the real life training is becoming more and more the specialty of the professional school. A complete preparation for the work of life can ill forego either the liberal background or the specialized efficiency that comes from professional training.