Colleges and universities should require all faculty to spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach.

Based on the idea that the core purpose of higher education, totally different from basic education, is to cultivate students’ creativity as well as the capability of autonomous learning, faculty should achieve a subtle balance between academic work and daily teaching. Therefore a wise alternative of the two sides is required dependent on various circumstances.

Distinct from education in high school, teaching in university owns more flexibility, which provides an opportunity for students to learn freely. Faculties tend to implement heuristic education and inspire students to find answers on their own instead of give them final results. In this case, no one can deny that being engaged in initiative work is the best origin of generating inspiring ideas. For instance, Richard Feynman made extraordinary contributions to quantum physics, which helps him a lot to become an excellent educator. Erwin Schordinger’s prominent ideas in wave mechanics made his lectures intriguing for undergraduates and even edified young scientists in other fields such as James Watson. Accordingly, being devoted to academic work not impairs but promotes daily teaching in university.

Comparatively, not like lower education, exploration of the unknowns is more involved in university. Therefore professors are inclined to research works of their own in stead of seemingly ‘dispensable’ work like teaching. Yet it is often neglected that teaching has a significant effect on research as well. Sometimes experienced faculty fails to break through the boundary of his own field due to his too specialized research. Thus communicating to students with larger range of knowledge serves as a plausible complement. For example, through practices in Heidelberg University, Karl Jaspers realized the critical promotion of teaching to his psychological research and thereby attached more importance to the participation in daily teaching of faculties in his books as well as his later career. Conclusively, teaching can distinctly facilitate academic work instead of merely be a distraction.

Considering an evident interaction between teaching and research and the limited time of them, wise faculties should keep balanced dependent on specific situations. For talented young faculties, attention need be more fixed on their academic work considering their future development. On contrary, having gained much enough experience, those accomplished professors are suitable to pay more attention to teaching students. So different strategies ought to be taken in face of various circumstances.

Generally speaking, serving as the dual responsibility of university, teaching and academic work are not totally separated but closely interacted. Therefore a sage faculty should make the most of it and achieve a balance between these two causes dependent on various conditions.