Should Falculty Work Outside Acadamic World

The speaker asserts that all faculties in college and university should spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach in order to improve the quality of instruction. While the cases this issue involved are various and complex, to make a conclusion without full analysis is superficial and arbitrary.

Admittedly, non-academic working experiences may enhance quality of instruction in various ways for certain disciplines which are more practical such as medicine and law. Experience and knowledge lead to success, which said by one of the most famous economist in the world. Working outside will be conductive to broadening of the faculty’s horizon and a more clear and exact understanding of the job market. The reasons are given as follow.   First, faculty who participate in professions outside the academic world would bring information about new technology and new products, which may have some links to what they are teaching at hands, and students will have a more clear understanding of what they are learning, how can these knowledge be used. Besides, teachers will arrange experiment courses according to these new trends and new technology in factory, which provide students an opportunity of mastering the skills needed in their future career. After all, students have to secure a good job after school, if they only focus on theories indoctrinated through books, they may suffer a lot after graduate. From this point of view, there is no denying that professors with professional experiences may earn more respect from their students who are interested in their insights in the real world.

However, as the energy of a person is limited, working outside will inevitably make a teacher not concentrate on preparing and teaching courses. The quality of instruction will hardly be satisfactory if teachers yawn from time to time and present lectures full of mistakes to students in class. For example, some famous professors have so...