TOPIC: ISSUE50 - "In order to improve the quality of instruction at the college and university level, all faculty should be required to spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach."
WORDS: 514 TIME: 01:32:54 DATE: 2007-07-27 10:51:28
Asserting that should all faculty be required to take up time working outside the academia owning to the improvement of the quality of instruction, as far as I am concerned, I partly agree with the speaker. The speaker unnecessarily extends the assertion to embrace all faculty in the college and university. In my point of view, whether all faculty should spend time working out academia depends on the detailed information about the faculties, such as the discipline taught by the faculties and the research task.
To begin with, for high education, instruction means teach students general and specified knowledge to qualified individual for professional activity or for employment in high position in business, government and industry. For that matter, the quality of high education may mostly be determined by whether college or university provides qualified students for academic world and practical world. Generally, there exist two different categories in high education: one is to train students with practical technique that will benefit their professional career, such as engineering, medical or agriculture, the other puts its attention to the theory research, such as math, physics, and so on. Obviously, college and university should have different policy according to their discipline in order to improve the quality of instruction.
For the faculties who train students with practical skills, it is indispensable for them to get the experience relevant to the courses. As we all know, practical experience is significant important for students in their later career in that experience reduces the time completing the projects and cost of the project. Also, it will be very effective for faculties to impart students with practical examples after the theory. For example, students may feel impressive about the gravitation after the faculties tell the apple story of the Newton. Students may have insightful understanding about this theory and will be more motivated in that course. What is more, it will equip the faculties with the most update techniques related the courses, and eventually this will benefit the students. For instance, in IC design area, numerous famous professors are the CTO of microelectronic company, or even own a company. They teach their students with latest and advanced techniques. In short, faculties in practical areas should spend time working outside the academia.
However, working outside the academia for the faculties who teach the subjects related theory research does not conduce much to the quality of instruction. The complexity of those disciplines would render the company too much investment and its profit will be a little vague and long-term. Thus few of company would be interested in these fields unless the companies have a vast amount of money. For example, few of company would invest to research quantum physics. While in college and university these kinds of research are the most advanced because of government's support in order to develop basic disciplines, which is necessary to the country. Therefore working outside the academia to gain experience will be useless in order to improve the quality of instruction. What is more, this kinds of disciplines need long-term critical thinking and analyzing, which may benefit little from the outside of the academic world.
To sum up, from what have been discussed, we may finally draw the conclusion that whether the faculties at the college and university spend time outside the academia depends on the aim of their discipline: for practical technique learning, the faculties should; while for theory research, the faculties should not.
Asserting that should all faculty be required to take up time working outside the academia owning to the improvement of the quality of instruction, as far as I am concerned, I partly agree with the speaker. The speaker unnecessarily extends the assertion to embrace all faculty in the college and university. In my point of view, whether all faculty should spend time working out academia depends on the detailed information about the faculties[faculty取教师之义时应该是不可数], such as the discipline taught by the faculties and the research task.
To begin with, for high education, instruction means teach[imparting sb with sth] students general and specified knowledge to qualified individual for professional activity or for employment in high position in business, government and industry[这里只涉及工作领域而没有提到学术领域]. For that matter, the quality of high education may mostly be determined by whether college or university provides qualified students for academic world and practical world. Generally, there exist two different categories in high education: one is to train students with practical technique that will benefit their professional career, such as engineering, medical or agriculture, the other puts its attention to the theory research, such as math, physics, and so on. Obviously, college[colleges] and university[universities] should have different policy[policies] according to their discipline[disciplines] in order to improve the quality of instruction.
For the faculties who train[impart] students with practical skills, it is indispensable for them to get the experience relevant to the courses. As we all know, practical experience is significant important for students in their later career[careers] in that experience reduces the time completing the projects and cost of the project. Also, it will be very effective for faculties to impart students with practical examples after[supporting] the theory. For example, students may feel impressive about the gravitation after the faculties tell the apple story of the Newton. Students may have insightful understanding about this theory and will be more motivated in that course. What is more, it will equip the faculties with the most update techniques related the courses, and eventually this will benefit the students. For instance, in IC design area, numerous famous professors are the CTO of microelectronic company, or even own a company. They teach their students with latest and advanced techniques. In short, faculties in practical areas should spend time working outside the academia.
However, working outside the academia for the faculties who teach the subjects[aiming at theoretical researches ] related theory research does not conduce much to the quality of instruction. The complexity of those disciplines would render[cost] the company too much investment and its profit will be [a little去掉] vague and[benefit the company in the long term] long-term. Thus few of company[few companies] would be interested in these fields unless the companies have a vast amount of money. For example, few of company would invest to research quantum physics. While in college and university these kinds of research are the most advanced because of government's support in order to develop basic disciplines, which is necessary to the country. Therefore working outside the academia to gain experience will be useless in order to improve the quality of instruction. What is more, this kinds of disciplines need long-term critical thinking and analyzing, which may benefit little from the outside of the academic world[What’s more, completing the researches in these theoretical disciplines would take quite a long time without certainty of the successes. Further, even the key breakthroughs in these fields may not benefit the world outside universities and colleges at all. ].
To sum up, from what have been discussed, we may finally draw the conclusion that whether the faculties at the college and university [should]spend time [working]outside the academia depends on the aim of their discipline: for practical technique learning, the faculties should; while for theory research, the faculties should not.