THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI AND ITS COOPERATIVE ENGINEERING COURSE
At its recent commencement exercises, the University of Cincinnati celebrated the opening of its new engineering building and the graduation of the first classes from the cooperative engineering course. The university itself and its cooperative engineering course are among the most interesting and promising educational experiments now in progress in this country. Cincinnati is the only city which maintains a municipal university. The state universities are the best witnesses that can be called in favor of our democracy. An institution such as the University of Wisconsin, liberally supported by the state and repaying many fold this support, covering the whole field of university work from the most special research to the most practical extension of knowledge among the people, has demonstrated what a democracy can do for a university and what a university can do for the state which maintains it. But centralization and great size have their dangers. It seems to be neither desirable nor possible for the university of a state to provide education for all its citizens. There are at present about twenty thousand students in the universities and colleges of the state of Ohio. The number has doubled in the past ten years and will probably again double in the course of a decade; within thirty years it may be expected to be between one and two hundred thousand. Under these circumstances it seems to be necessary that not only the state but also the larger cities should maintain universities. The University of Cincinnati has demonstrated that this is feasible. At the beginning there may be neglect or political intrigue, but these are sure to be automatically outgrown as in the case of
