» ISSUE 50 yeer’s blog 生活思考觉悟

Published 23:42 Sunday, June 7th, 2009 by yeer 2,850 views

ISSUE 50

50、"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."

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, the quality of instruction is directly relative to the capabilities of faculty. So, as a way to improve qualification of faculty, to require them work outside will be conducive to broadening of their horizon and a more clear and exact understanding of job market. For instance, the experience of working outside college and university for faculty will help them find out what knowledge and skills are desired by employers and necessary to do a job well, which will benefits students when those specific knowledge and skills are introduced into courses later. One primary reason why it is difficult for graduates from college and university to find jobs is not that there are few job vacancies but that they have not mastered the knowledge and skills required by companies. From this point of view, the assertion above is reasonable.

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. As a matter of fact, many teachers, especially graduate instructors, have already been distracted much from the work they are responsible for. For example, some famous professors have so many seminars to attend and lectures to address, not in class but on social occasions, that their students complain for having not seen them for the better part of a month. In situations like this, if the busy professors are still required to work outside, you can imagine the feelings of their students. Perhaps, what should be done to those professors is to ask them to spend more time with their students, not just to encourage them to work outside.

Moreover, some disciplines such as theoretical physics need more devotion in laboratory to formulating models and deduction rather than working experience outside. As to other subjects, such as cosmology and archeology, there are no appropriate job positions at all for researchers in those fields. Besides, to require faculty to work outside will exert severe negative impacts on those field which develops fast. The research on nanoscaled materials is a typical example. Numerous academic papers are published and many breakthroughs are made every year even every month. Working outside for a researcher will only results in the lack of latest developments which is fatal to his or her study. In fact, aside from working outside, other means to train faculty are available and prove to be effective empirically. For example, inviting notable scholars to present lectures regarding academic front and trend, taking part in symposium regularly and so on. On the other hand, the quality of instruction is influenced by many other factors, such as learning atmosphere, teaching facilities and curriculum provision. Overemphasis on the qualification of faculty may make us ignore the core of problems.

In summary, though to require all faculty to work outside the academic world can not be denied thoroughly, the management of corresponding college and university should undertake a full investigation to decide who should work outside, for how long a period and the measures to take to assure the quality of instruction during their leaving.