ISSUE50 by rogges

roggesUID: 2666147

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: 457
TIME: 00:46:46
DATE: 2009-8-14 15:06:54

As a student in an engineering major, I must say, the premise above, be it a little extreme or not, states a necessary way that is being taken in many universities and colleges, although not by every single faculty.

It is generally accepted by engineering academies that as a professional researcher in any engineering field, one shall keep enough touch with the related industrial business to be informed with the fresh contents in that field. In such a fast-developing world, the technology is being shaped and reshaped even within one day. Different companies, fighting their way to occupy larger part of the market, invest huge amount of resources into their R&D departments, pushing the level of technology all the way up. Should anyone isolate oneself from other researching circles, especially the practicing circles, he/she would be undoubtedly left out of the practicing trend of that field,

Currently, almost every laboratory doing research as computer science, biological medicine, power electronics or whatsoever that is practically being carried out in the front line of industry, attach some of its projects with a technological company which is doing related business. The professors and other researchers in the lab, while finishing there particular researching project, make successful cooperation with the company.

Hitherto, it seems the assertion made above does has its points. What it means, or at least part of it, is actually going on between the market and the institutes. Furthermore, they are doing fine, gaining much like a win-win result. Good news for the engineering professions.

However, all this is only one side of the coin. Think about some very respectable professor, whose specialized field is, oddly enough, psychological disease and sexual psychology. What related business shall we be recommending this nice scholar to practice in order to, according to the premise above, improve the quality of instruction the professor performs in his/her class?

Yet there are not only the psychological field, we have all the social science like philosophy, ethnics, politics, history and so on. Faculties in these fields would find it quite hard to experience any working related to their field outside the academic world. It shall be obvious then, that the assertion could only be applicable to particular fields of academy.

However, we do not have to worry that since those faculties whose field cannot find any practice outside, their research and teaching activities would be relatively weakened. One professional faculty knows much more ways to improve the quality of instruction. Communication, for example, between scholars from different universities, stands a very important role for the improvement. And they have conferences, they have journals, they have a whole society running outside to be observed and studied, however not to be, mentioning again, practiced like computer programs.