The President (Mr. R. H. Harry Stanger, F.C.S.A.M.Inst.C.E.), said he had noticed that the authorities responsible for education for the engineering profession tried to cram an immense amount of work into a very short time. Whereas a generation ago a young man
studying for the engineering profession would spend three years at College and could acquire a fairly good knowledge of his subjects in that period, in modern times, science having become so vast, a man had to devote almost the whole of his life to his stmudies. With regard to the problem of examination, the President expressed his agreement with the policy of the Institution’s late President, who had insisted that if he wished to examine any of the candidates orally after the examination papers had been sent in he was to be allowed to do so, because he had found that many men were almost incapable of indicating on paper the real extent of their knowledge. The President urged that teaching staffs should support that policy, so that men who really had the requisite knowledge should receive their diplomas or degrees, even though, in their papers, they might have made a number of silly mistakes which in the ordinary course of events they would never make; not everyone had the temperament for
examinations.