[i习作temp] issue50 第一篇issue,求拍,谢谢哦~ [复制链接]

algabra
UID: 2748722

寄托新兵

Rank: 2

声望: 0
寄托币: 111
注册时间: 2010-1-12
精华: 0
帖子: 0

发表于 2010-3-27 11:40:17 |显示全部楼层

本帖最后由 algabra 于 2010-3-27 11:42 编辑

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."

Nowadays people are paying more and more attention to the practical issues of science and technologies, especially applied sciences. Some people propose to require all faculties in the universities to take occupations outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach. Those people hope the experiences from occupation could help students get acquainted with practices in daily life and thus improve the quality of instruction. However, I disagree with them for several reasons.

First of all, it is difficult for professors from certain disciplines to find jobs relevant to their majors. For example, professors in philosophy and advanced mathematics could hardly find occupations that have much to do with Plato, Aristotle, or Euler, Riemann outside universities or institutes for research.Such requirements are irrational and unpractical to these professors.

Even for the professors who can easily find relevant jobs, they may still loss more than they could gain from the work. What valuable they take from the work is the practical experiences and possible inspires. However, the cost is significant time and energy since the professors, pushed by pressures from the bosses and their own conscience, are not willing to drift along. Yet, a large part of the time and energy they spent is used to get familiar with the environment as well as deal with personal relationship and other trivial things that have no help to researches or instructions. So the time really used in obtaining practical experiences and inspires is much fewer than people have expected and therefore professors would absorb much less practical knowledge. It is not worthy to spend so much time and energy for such little knowledge. If the faculties utilize the time and energy on work to teach students, answer their questions or study the latest documents, they could get much more fruits and give students much greater help.

Furthermore, some occupations and private interests involved may hinder professors from objective and independent researches. For example, if an economics professor takes a job in a real estate company, he may hesitate to deliver his real pessimistic opinions about the prosperity of the real estate in order not to reduce the revenue of the company and the salary of his own. It is also true for professors in politic science. If they become advisors in the government, they may be compelled by their stance and improperly plead for the government. Those words may mislead students from truth. What is worse, such conducts will greatly impair the sublime academic morality and become bad samples for young students.

And the valuable experiences could be acquired by other better methods. For example, faculty could visit the factories; interview people who take relevant occupations, or take part in short-term interns during summer holidays. These methods are capable of supplying precious information while avoid wasting too much time and energy. Since they do not make direct profits to faculty, these actions will not disturb professors' independent researches and studies. In my opinion, these methods are much better than requiring faculty to work outside campus.

To sum up, the requirement for all faculties to take occupations outside the campus is terrible and unpractical since it ignores the specific reality of some disciplines and disadvantages that may result in. After careful consideration, I think the disadvantage of the proposal will overwhelm the advantages, and we can gain these benefits by other ways. After all, the freedom of whether take actions to get more practical experience should be awarded to faculty themselves. Rigid regulations could hardly help but easily make inverse consequences.