Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-02-01
BUSINESS SENSE
COURSE INSTITUTED
M. |. T. Takes Departure
From Traditional Policy in
Its Electrical Engineering.
BY j. C. ROYLE.


Special Dispatch to The Star.
f CAMBRIDGE, Mass, February
IA course in business sense-that
Is what the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, whose name has been
identifed with technical and scien-
the training for years, offers today to
It's electrical engineering students.
This great educational institution
has put its finger unerringly on the
difficulty which faces graduates Of
technical schools when they leave
their alma mater for the struggle of
life. The authorities of the institute
found that great industrial concerns
wanted college-trained men, but they
wanted men who could apply techni-
raj training in a practical way
1T takes two or three years train
Ing after graduation before most of
the college trained men acquire
enough business sense to pull their
weight and be really valuable to u.s.
as one big electrical corporation
executive put 1t.
Willing to Pay for Training.
The companies are willing to pay
for that training, but they want only
to train the best men, men who mean
to stick" The institute wants to
have its men trained in business
sense before graduation instead of
after
The institute declares that for a boy
TO absorb the great mass of scientific
information an electrical engineer
must have, and to learn how to apply
those facts to industry, requires more
than the usual four-year course Yet
students who stay five years in school
lose touch with industry and spend
years Kidding themselves of the COX
ford bag attitude and gaining bust
ness sense.
so the institute got together with
the General Electric Co., Stone &
Webster, the Edison Electric Illum-
mating Co. of Boston and the Boston
Elevated Railway, each representing
a distinct phase in the electrical field.
Then it designed the new cooperative
course. This includes all of the regu-
lar academic work in electrical engi-
neering as well as full year of post
graduate work. While acquiring this
knowledge the student gets Is months
practical experience, the two being so
blended that while the student has
received up-to-date training in electri-
cal engineering, he has been for three
years in intimate contact with the
electrical industry and has a mental
attitude tending toward success.
Open to Selected Men.
This course is open only to electri-
cal engineering students who have
had good records for two years in
the regular course. Such men are al
lowed to indicate at the end of two
years the company with which they
wish to train. Representatives of that
company look them over and pick the
ones they would like to have remain
with the company, taking personality
and aggressiveness into consideration.
Then begins a three-year co-opera.
tive schedule under which the student
spends alternate periods of four
months each at the institute and at
the plant. The institute maintains an
instruction staff at each plant. The
Jobs the students hold are not a hit
or miss choice. They are carefully
laid out into series in different 6e-
partments, starting in the shops and
ending in the research and experi-
mental laboratories.
1t is OF such material that the large
companies expect to build up their
staffs of future executives,
The students during the practical
training period are paid salaries which
compare most favorably with what
most of them could earn in the first
year or two out of college, and which
are larger than the company would
have to pay non-college men.