Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1884 [PAGE 164]

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168 students from Champaign county will be found to be no greater than the proportion of the expense of organization and endowment which that county has paid into the treasury of the University. The occupations of those who send to the University, so far as they have been ascertained, have been, from the beginning, as follows: From parents occupied in agricultural pursuits, including farmers, nurserymen, stock-raisers, etc 52 % From parents occupied in mechanical pursuits, including workers at trades, laborers, miners, etc 12 % From parents occupied in mercantile pursuits, including wholesale or retail dealers, agents, bankers, etc 23 % From parents occupied in professional pursuits, including teachers, physicians, lawyers, clergymen, etc 13 % This institution is emphatically the haven of the needy student who seeks the privileges of a higher intellectual training. Without question, three-fourths of our students either support themselves or come from homes where the yearly income is seriously diminished by the effort to send one or more away for instruction. It is still farther worthy of note that a sound technical education in agriculture, in mechanics, in architecture, in engineering, in chemistry, in pharmacy, in veterinary science, may be secured at this Univereity, at an aggregate cost for fees paid into the college treasury, for a four years' course, of $105; while a similar course of study would cost the Illinois student at Ann Arbor $145; at Cornell, $300; at the Sheffield School at New Haven, or the.Steven's Institute at Hoboken, $600, and at the Columbia School of Mines, at New York, or the Institute of Technology, at Boston, $800. As to the instruction given, it may seem presumption to claim equality with schools of greater age and of vastly greater wealth; but we may remark, without overstepping the bounds of modesty, that whenever it has happened that our students have left us to go to schools named in the list above, they have, in every case, been admitted to classes of grade even with those they occupied with us, and they have graduated honorably without loss of time. The students who have matriculated at this University have chosen courses of study as follows:

From the beginning. In the College of Agriculture College of Engineering College of Natural Science (chemistry, &c.) . In Elective Scientific courses Total in Technical courses ' In the College of Literature and Science Commercial, Special and Resident Graduates. 13 per 24 per 10 per 13 per Present year.

cent. I 6 per cent. cent. 29 per cent, cent. tfi percent. cent. II per cent.

|60 per cent. ti2 per cent. 32 per cent. •35 per cent. 8 per cent. 3 per cent.

The ratio of women in attendance is about 20 per cent.; from the beginning 18.4 per cent. Of these about one-twentieth, or 1 per cent of the aggregate of students, have taken technical courses. If, then, we deduct from each of the great divisions of students,