issue50 by lesheng

qinleshengUID: 2309050

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."
WORDS: 656          TIME: 01:30:00          DATE: 2009/2/17 14:41:52
Education has always been one of the hottest topic in this planet and what kind of roles a teacher should play and how a teacher could help the student grow up both physically and mentally is,without any doubt, a controversial topic.Whether a faculty should spend time working outside the ivory tower,in my perspective,should be based on a case-by-case study.
The statement itself is a little misleading since nowadays we will not be too surprised to find out a professor in the university is,at the same time, a CEO(Chief Executive Officer) or a part-time consultant for a company.On one hand, just like a writer after all wants his book to be read, a professor finally intend to push the enterprise or the industry forward by using the words in the book.On the other hand,including faculty into the board of members or other positions, the company might be benefited from the vision and wisdom of the professors.Even sometimes,the academic thing would be the cradles for a new industry. James Mckinsey,an accounting professor at University of Chicago, founded Mckinsey&Company --which is no doubt a great success and brings about consulting theory and professional service as well.This illustrates the point that the knowledge in brain could be turned to cash on hand
While the industry and the enterprise could be benefited from the professor,the students themselves would find the things taught at school are much more practical and easier to comprehend.Just as you can never expect learn how to swim simply by reading a book concerning about swimming, a IT major professor who is wokring on how to build a software , need some experience in the software industry to make sure he is keeping up with the latest technological trends and most importantly what he is teaching is useful when his students is looking for a job.In addition,common sense tells us that theory in the book tend to be boring for most students,however,combined with a case or a scenario,the monotone theory would be much easier to comprehend.
Admittedly,as is pointed out by some critics, some faculy who are working on subjects like physics,mathmetics or literature were not easy to find a position closely related to what they are teaching and whether the real world experience is essential in these subjects which emphasized mainly on theory is open to doubt. However,spending time working outside the academic world is far beyond a title in an enterprise.The faculties in the university, usually classified by which departments they are from and what particular research they are doing,might need some inspirations or brain-storming which do not come from their everyday routine.What they are researching might revolutionize another totally different industry.Emanuel Derman,a physics professor in the Columbia University,reapplied his modelling talents into the investment banking industry and therefore created a new position in all the global leading financial service firm-Quant.
Although when a professor spend time working outside the academic world the industry and students could be the beneficiary, we should not underestimate the possible drawbacks created by this phenomenon.Everyone in this world only have 24 hours a day and 365 days in a year(366 in a leap year), all faculty are no exception.Spending one more hour outside the academic world results in one less hour inside the academic world.Those professors who invested precious time into the business world might be impossible to make any endeavors in the research fields--They might not have time to write their paper,they might not even squeeze some minutes to read any papers published by their counterparts,which is a disater for their research.
As the proverb goes "You can not have your cake and eat it too", while it is a fabulous opportunity for the faculty to substantiate their theory in the real world if they spend some time outside the academic world,this could be detrimental to their orginal research plan.One needs to figure out what he/she really likes and decide how many minutes should  be arranged to non-academic activties.