Issue50 教师校外任职的重要性【求拍，有拍必回】

爱上千年的猫UID: 2476232

Issue50: 604 words  45 minutes
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.

On the way to improving the quality of college or university education, some people are arguing that faculty should participate in some programs in relevant to the course they teach but outside the campus. In my view, this issue is to some extent beyond whether college teachers should work outside to be more competent in teaching. It is about what we should provide our student with to enable them survive in the multiple world. Since different fields require comprehensive knowledge and skills in different levels, it is hard to give a specific answer to all fields. We had better use a case-to-case study to discuss the problem.

It is obviously useful for teachers in certain fields, like business and applied science, to attend outside-campus activities. If so, not only teachers can accumulate sufficient social experience and the latest trend, but the students will well benefit from it. Consider the business school first. The main purpose of a business school is to prepare students well for the competitive business world with various skills like communication, net working, social manners and so forth. If the teacher has not been working outside the campus, he can hardly know what the real world requires. Only with certain experience in the relevant professions, a teacher in business school can determine what should be provided to the students and in what way the students can absorb those messages best. That is part of what the teachers can gain from participating relevant professions outside the college.

The fields of applied science also reveal similar result. Consider a student in chemical-material department. Without a mentor informed of the latest trend of new materials needed and the most advanced technology being applied, the student may be confused when he faces thousands of possible research directions. If he has a mentor who spends some time attending social programs outside the academic world, he will be more exposed to latest information in that field. Or he could even attend some these real programs under the instruction of his mentor, which will no doubt make him more competitive when he graduates from the college. That is part of what the students can gain from a teacher spending some time working outside the academic world.

However, in some other fields, outside-campus activities will bring more harm than benefit. The fields of history and archaeology come into mind immediately. Compared to business and applied science, these two fields aim at telling the truth in the past and describing a world where our ancestors lived. The link between academic achievement and social requirement is not so robust that spending time working outside the academic world may be of little help. Moreover, those activities will take up the time that could be spent on the academic research, which will slow down the development in these fields.

In the fields like history and archaeology, what the students should be taught is the objective attitude and the scientific research methods towards the past. They should keep an ingenuous mind that too much social link will in fact disturb the inner ingenuity. The best way to raise students in these kinds of fields is to provide them with a free environment of academic research, rather than those seemingly profitable professions outside the academic world.

In conclusion, whether college or university faculty should attend relevant professions outside the campus in order to improve the quality of education, there is no uniform answer since various academic fields focus on academic knowledge and social experience differently.  A case-to-case study is therefore needed when we are attempting to answer the question.