, the average age being considerably greater.
Men of mature years and of wide experience and training avail themselves
to the privileges offered. The courses are from three to four years in
length.

[3] "The new universities thus developed have the purpose of affording
higher instruction for the technical positions in state and community
service, as well as in industrial life, and of cultivating sciences and
arts which are intimately connected with the field of technology (Berlin
provisory statute, 1879). They prove themselves equal to universities in
the following points: they claim for their matriculated students the
same preparatory education required by the old universities, namely,
nine years at a classical high school; they grant and insist upon
perfect freedom in teaching and learning; and are under the direction of
rectors elected for one year, instead of having principals chosen for
life as in secondary schools."

[Footnote 3: Report of the United States Commissioner of Education,
1897-1898, page 70.]

It may be said here that an exception to the rule of the annual election
of the administrative officers, is furnished in the example of the
Munich school, which retains a permanent Director as the custom
prevailed in times past.

Unless otherwise qualified, students must have prepared in the
Industrieschule, the Gymnasium, the Real-Gymnasium or in the trade or
building schools. In lieu of this an examination is demanded.
Twenty-four is the minimum age of graduation.

In tracing the development of these schools from unpretentious
beginnings to their present high standards of excellence, we see that
more and more they have become unified in purpose and similar in
curricula. In the early days too, the qualifications for admission,
their dynamic government, and educational standards were lower and more
diversified than we find them to-day. Sustained by the State and each
administered by its board or council, they are doing a work which cannot
be excelled by the universities themselves.

The organization of departments of work offered is approximately the
same in all schools. In Berlin there are six departments:

first, general school of applied science;
second, general construction engineering;
third, machine construction;
fourth, naval engineering;
fifth, chemistry and mining engineering;
sixth, architecture.

Special attention is given certain subjects in one or another of these
schools; ci