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Whetherfaculty should be requested to work outside university in related professionsor stay within the academic world is primarily dependent on the discipline.While in some areas, industry experience can benefit students in terms ofefficiency of acquiring knowledge and applying them, not stepping out might bemore suitable for certain subjects according to their nature. Also overemphasis on outside-university experience may bring counterproductive effects. To beginwith, I am in harmony with the contention that industry experience of facultymembers in certain areas can help students learn efficiently. Some subjects area profound combination of academic theory and real-world cases, neither ofwhich could stand alone.Without either of them, professors themselves could be said to have theknowledge, let alone teaching. A paradigmatic example is finance, the hottestand most competitive subject in business realm. Only through investing bythemselves and watching how the market moves can professors know how to teachtheir students to analyze investments and adapt to the fluctuating financialworld. By sharing with the students how they make long-term financial plan andshort-term maintenance in a corporate environment, students will learn thetheory of corporate finance in an interesting and easy way and may be even motive to pursue a career in this field. Secondly, wemust recognize the purpose of higher education is not only acquiring knowledgebut also how to apply it in the real industry. After all, some of the collegestudents need to contribute to the society in the form of working aftergraduation. In this era of rapid technological change, students studyingcomputer engineering or information system must keep them up with the pace ofindustry. In addition, they need to know like how programming can help solvecertain problems, and which system is more suitable to store information in acertain area. Being more familiar with the industry, professors can guidestudents in a meaningful and practical direction. Theprofessors with field experience is better able to impart useful, up-to-dateinformation about what work in the field entails, and even about the currentjob markets. Nevertheless,there exists disciplines which have less connection with the outside world, oreven there are no available jobs outside academic world. Most of them arerelated to humanity that requires more deep thinking than experiences. Forexample, think of philosophy, we can hardly think of a job other than educationand academic research. There is no profession to speakof outside academia. Further, philosophy requires thinking profoundlyand deeply in a way that outside work, if there is any, can have little effecton it. Thus, requirement of working in these areas may not be proper andnecessary. Moreover,over-emphasis on outside-academic world may lead to counterproductive results.Faculty members may not have enough time and energy to prepare for the class ordo research. They might be annoyed by the complexity of outside world. Last butnot least, in the case of lack of education manpower, colleges should thinktwice before they take the action to encourage lecturers to work outside. To sum up,aside from some areas in which outside world is neither available nornecessary, an appropriate requirement of working outside will eventually dobenefit than harm regarding college education. | 
发表于 2010-1-5 10:43:02
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