Definitely, a victory 小组第4次作业 Issue50 By3号echo（huohuo0101）

huohuo0101UID: 2760840

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."

The speaker suggests that all college faculty should work outside the academic world in professions relevant to the course they teach in order to improve quality of instruction at high level. I concede that working experience outside academic would promote personal growth, but whether the experience should be required to increase instruction quality depends primarily on academic area. And time spent on working as required should be limited not to interfere with regular instruction.

For faculty working at universities whose main job is producing and broadcasting knowledge, working outside academic world is an experience applying knowledge which provides a whole new perspective. The new perspective can bring new ideas to their academic research and vivid material to class. As a student, I found it the most interesting when teachers make connection between real-world experiences and text books.

It’s very tempting to require all faculty to spend time on out-of-academic field considering the above merits. But the proposal doesn’t caters to every academic area, especially for two qualifications. First is fundamental subjects which can not be directly applied to solve daily problem. For a theoretical physicist whose job is to figure out the entire universe, there is hardly job which is relevant to his/her profession. Even assuming there is, the work is more of a recreation than a enriching experience. Second, professions boasting particular skills are pretty the same no matter in or out of academia. College faculty working in painting art demonstrate practical techniques and skills to their students everyday, thus there is no need for them to work outside academia.


On the other hand, working out of academia in relevant profession is a necessary qualification for college teaching faculty in certain academic areas such as management, sociology and economy. These subjects are originated from real world life. Students study not only through reading text books, but also through case studies and field practice. Thus teachers are required to be equipped with real experience to guide the students. For example, my teacher who teaches the course consultancy psychology, is a mental counselor herself owning her own clinic. The cases we study at class were symptoms happened to her clients. the complicated cases perfectly explains text-book theories and updated us with the cutting-edge technique.
Another benefit students will enjoy from their teachers who currently work at the market is insightful career advices. The part-time working teachers are aware of what the employers are like in certain profession and can design the instruction according to the market demands.

Even encouraging faculty of certain academia working in relevant professions, we should stand in an economic position to assess the costs and gains. As long as every member of faculty in a institute in required to spent certain amount of time working outside the campus, the management problems rises instantly. How much time should be required exactly? How to prevent faculty from aiming at the large profit working thus pay less attention on the instruction? How to assess the working experience? To solve the problem costs large amount of human and financial resources. If a better solution to improve the instruction quality can be sought under less investment, why bother to ask faculty drop their current research to find a job?


In sum, the proposal that teachers should be equipped with relevant working experience to come to the class is not suitable for fundamental subject scientists and artists who perform their skills in class everyday. But for other academic areas, teachers’ working experience is very helpful to the students thus can improve instruction quality. While before totally adopting the proposal, other methods costing less should be checked.