第四次作业[Jet]小组

zhxj1985UID: 2353169

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: 503          TIME: 01:22:12          DATE: 2008-2-20 10:37:56

According to the statement that all faculty at college and university should be required to spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach in order to improve the quality of instruction. While I agree that in some realm such as engineering and technology working experience does benefit faculty themselves and students they teach, I strongly insist that in some special subjects such as arts, history and fundamental science etc. working experience do little to improve the quality of instruction at the college and university level for teachers or even distract them from researching.

Most students in the area of engineering would find jobs after their graduation. Knowledge they learned at college and university will used in the real world in final, so they need to be got prepared in their college lives for the future career by their teachers. We can hardly image that faculty without any working experience in this area could afford effective instruction for their students' future career or even job finding. On the other hand, some experience outside the academic world help teachers arouse the interest of the students and get classes more animated. In addition, working experience in the practical world would also help faculty members give more useful suggestions of the courses offered in college and university according to the needs of the real society, which will improve the quality of whole education system in college and university and help to cultivate qualified individuals for the real society.

However, in some special subjects such as fundamental science, over-emphasis on the working experience outside the academic world will do harm to faculty members or even the whole education system in college and university. Faculty members in this area care less about the real world, what they do is to provide instructions to various fields of the society. It should be the professional fields in the real world to get useful information from the achievements that outstanding faculty members in college and university attained rather than teachers that should get working experience from the outside academic. Compulsory working of faculty members in this subject in professions outside the academic world as proposed by the author above will get them distracted from their researching and instruction work on which they should really concentrate. What's worse, outstanding faculty members tend to leave those colleges and universities where they are not able to concentrate on subjects that they like and have to waste a lot of time on working outside the academic which does little to their researching and instruction work.

To sum up, it all depends whether faculty members should spend time on working outside the academic in professions relevant to the courses they teach as the previous analysis. We need to deal with this issue according to the distinct realm that faculty members engaged in. A balance should also be called for in how much time should college and university faculty devote in for whom working experience does benefit them and students they teach .