III — Vocational education in Philadelphia and Vicinity

Vocational Education is a term which has so wide a scope that in the following brief report certain limitations will be established which will, it is hoped, tend to give a larger value to the statements made in it. The first limitations is to consider only those kinds of vocational education which would be certain to be of direct interest to members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Having some doubt as to how much vocational and professional education overlap, and realizing that the general character and purpose of regular engineering courses, and, for that matter, of manual training and trade school courses, are quite well understood, the writer has decided to further limit the scope of his section of this report to information regarding education offered and made available to men whose employment is in or closely related to engineering industries. He does this with a certain amount of regret, believing there are points of interest and matters worthy of discussion which might be noted in regard to various institutions in the vicinity of Philadelphia which cannot be referred to. Among other things he has in mind the engineering courses at Drexel Institute, which have been operated with increasing success for many years, although nothing has ever been put into print regarding them, except that which appears in the regular printed circular. They are laid along lines somewhat different from those found in university courses on the one hand, and are quite different from courses in trade or industrial schools on the other. Those who operate them believe they fill a distinct place in engineering education and have a merit that has not been widely recognized mainly because no publicity at all has been sought for them.