Phoenix小组组员11号2010.2.12 issue

xusichuangUID: 2653998

50"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."

Weather faculties should be required to spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the course they teach in order to improve the instruction quality is a complicated controversial question. I partially agree with the author’s opinion, that is, some faculties should while the other should not.
The reason why some of the faculties should be required to spend time working outside the academic world lies in the inborn disadvantages of the mechanism of the educational institution such as colleges and universities. In some academic field, such as economic and management, it derives fundamentally from the society. Many theories of these academic fields develop along with the society’s developing. Therefore, the faculties should be required to work in the practical world, where they can learn the cutting edge knowledge and thus avoid the hiatus between the academic world and practical world. And the knowledge they acquired at college or university can be applies in the practical world, which will greatly enhance the learning, thus providing better instruction quality.
However, there are exceptions. We know some academic fields such as pure mathematics and theoretical physics. What they study merely exist in the real world, so you can not find any places for them to work. For those scientists who dedicated in the fields that are so abstract and so recondite, forcing them to work outside their profession is just wasting their time, and will cause negative effect. One typical example concerns with the renowned scientist, Albert Einstein, who originate the relative theory. His theory is such an abysmal that can not be understood by his colleague, let alone be understood by the outsiders. How come we expect a person like him to work in the practical world. Another reason is that requiring faculties to work outside their profession will cause indirect disorder of the whole education system. As many of the faculties went for work, their time in teaching and research will be reduced. What’s worse, if the salary at work is higher than that of at school, some of them would leave for a better pay. When more and more faculties leave, there would be little chance that the instructive quality will increase.
To sum up, there is no easy answer to this question. As the saying goes, every coin has both sides. Let some of the faculties to work outside their profession is beneficial, not all of the faculties are suitable to this.