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Issue73
73. Colleges and universities should require all facultyto spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to thecourses they teach.
Write a response in which you discuss your views on thepolicy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing andsupporting your position, you should consider the possible consequences ofimplementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position.
Education is one of the most important factors which mayaffect a nation’s development. Faculty members who teach in colleges anduniversities need to have a profound understanding of their area of interestsand always stand in the edge of their research field. Besides this, somecollege and universities always ask their faculty to work outside of theacademic world but still relevant with the course they teaching. As a college student myself, I prefer suchopinion by the following reasons.
First, a professor with a better understanding of theprofessional area can help his/her student better prepared for the job market.Even through the purpose for higher education is to educate people to have deepunderstanding and specialized in one academic area, eventually not everyone canbecome a scientist. A student who is taught by a faculty who knows what theindustrial world valued can make the course he/she teaches more applicable andcan let the students understand the real use of the knowledge they have learnedfrom the classroom. The more the students understand about the application ofthe principles they have learned from the course, the more they may beinterested in the course.
Secondly, even though no one can deny the importance oflab research for a faculty member, how to convert their lab results intosomething can be used in the real world is also need to be thinking. Byspending some time in the outside world, the professor can have a more cleardirection of their ongoing research in the lab. If the connections betweenacademic field and industry can be better found, the research in the lab can befunded by the companies who need the results of research to develop theirproducts and make profits. For example, some fundamental lab research inbiological field is quite related with the discovery and development of newdrugs for the diseases. If the faculty can work in a pharmaceutical company forsome time and go back to lab to conduct research, the research may be betteroriented and can save time for some unnecessary experiments.
However, the faculty members need to remember theirprincipal goals as a researcher and teacher as well. Working in related fieldis essential but can not take too much time from them. The majority part oftheir energy should still be spent in the academic world and try to lead thedevelopment of their specialized field. The time they spend on doing scientificresearches need to be guaranteed in order to make sure some innovative ideascan be inspired. If a faculty member emphasize too much on the needs of thecompanies, he/she may lose the initial interests of scientific research whichmay also lead to unfair results of their research. Also, if a professor spendsmost of his/her time on exploring the industrial world, the time for him/her toknow the development in the academic world is limited. Then the basic and fundamentalknowledge he/she can teach to the students need to be questioned as well.
To sum up, it is always a good thing for the faculty tospend their time on getting to work outside of the academic world andunderstand the needs of the future employers of their students and let thembetter prepared for the job market. However, the only way faculty members canperform their role as a teacher and researcher completely is to spend majorityof their time in the academic world and work in the professional field for a smallamount of time each year. |
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发表于 2012-11-20 21:57:07
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