Useful Industrial Education

An arrangement has been effected recently between an Edinburgh technical college and several manufacturing firms of that city which could hardly fail to prove highly beneficial to industry if adopted generally in the United States. The plan provides that the manufacturers shall make special concessions to the students of the college, permitting a shorter apprenticeship and a corresponding decrease in the college term.

The arrangement is comparatively new in Great Britain, but it has been tried successfully on the continent, especially with the smaller schools. There may be isolated instances in the U.S. of such co-operation, but we know of no case where a prominent technical college, like that of Edinburgh, has made such an arrangement as part of its policy.

In Germany it is an established custom for technical schools and the industries to work together for mutual advantage. Saxony maintains close relationship between her upward of 150 minor industrial schools and twenty-eight different industries, and throughout the empire manufacturers see that the novice in industrial art is put to no great expense in securing raw material.

The result of such a course is a much better theoretical and practical training for the learner in a shorter time than is possible under the system in operation in the United States and Germany's superiority in educational instruction lies largely in this effective co-operation.

To meet the sharp industrial competition of today the manufacturer demands workmen who can produce quantity as well as quality-quantity to keep every available market well supplied, and quality to secure or to maintain a reputation for superiority. The technical school may supply this demand in a measure, but it needs to be supplemented by the practical training of apprenticeship. If both of these can be combined, so that the manufacturer and the technical school will work together, it will manifestly take less time to produce the finished workman than at present. 

Foreign manufacturers send delegations and representatives here to study our industries. We might with benefit send experts abroad to study better methods of effectively combining theory and practice and applying them intelligently to industry.-Chicago Post.