The overarching belief was that because engineering was utilitarian and benefitted the many, it was inferior to the classics, which focused on the mental and moral improvement of the student; the prevailing thought – especially at tradition-bound schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth – was that integrating engineering with classics would subvert the purpose of higher education.[7] In Pugh's time, most engineering programs focused almost exclusively on developing skills within civil engineering[8] – e.g. canals, railroads, bridges – for obvious reasons: the expansion of the nation required knowledge of developing infrastructure. Pugh realized that on-the-job training (the most common form of learning a profession), combined with the nation's economic and geographic growth, would not adequately meet the demand for educated professionals familiar with the “mechanic arts.[8]”