But to the older professions for which the University prepares there have been added during the past century other vocations or professions which need and demand an education no less important and no less thorough than the education for the well established recognised professions. The need for the higher training of the future leaders of industry and the future captains of commerce has been provided by the organisation and establishment of technological schools and colleges. The establishment and organisation of the "Technical University" has been more thorough in Germany than in this country. There we find established newer institutions, of which the Charlottenburg College is the best known and most important, for the higher education of those intended in after-life to perform the more important industrial services of the community. These institutions both in their organisation and instruction are constantly approximating in type to the older Universities.
The recently established Universities in the North of England attempt, with what success it is too early yet to declare, to combine both aims of training for the older and newer professions. In Scotland the latter work is largely undertaken by the Technical Colleges, and in these institutions the increasing need is for the extension and development of the Day-school course.
One other question of some importance remains for brief consideration. In our own country, but more especially in Germany, there is a tendency at the present time to effect a complete separation between the work of the University and the work of the Technical College.
This separation has arisen partly through the operation of external historical conditions, but it has also arisen partly through the tendency in certain academic circles to look down upon technical knowledge and ability as something inferior. The exclusiveness and the torpor of the older Universities in many cases has been a further cause tending to the creation of the Technical College separated from the University.
Such a separation, however, is good neither for the University nor for the Technical College. The former in carrying out the aim of scientific research and of the extension of knowledge requires ever the vivifying touch of actual concrete experience, and this it can only obtain by keeping in close contact with those whose chief function is the application of scientific knowledge to practice. The latter in carrying out its more practical aims requires, if it is to be saved from the narrowness of mere specialisation and from degenerating into empirical methods, the constant co-operation of those whose outlook is not narrowed down to the immediate practical end, but takes in the subject as a whole, and whose chief function is the better systematisation of knowledge.
Hence, while the aim of the University is different from that of the Technical College, they are so intimately correlated that neither can reach its fullest development without the aid and co-operation of the other. The Technical Colleges should be the professional schools attached to the scientific side of the Universities. Moreover, this division and separation is economically wasteful, since the general training in science which must precede the practical training has to be carried on both in the University and in the Technical College.
In Scotland this separation has not advanced to such a stage as is the case in Germany. In any further reorganisation of university and higher education it is earnestly to be hoped that the Day Technical College will find its rightful place as an integral part of the University, and that the latter may realise that her function is to further and extend the bounds of knowledge in order that practice in every sphere of life may be rendered more efficient.
FOOTNOTE:
[41] Cf. Prof. Paulsen, The German Universities, p. 111 (Eng. Trans.).