GRE Issue 73Colleges and universities should require all faculty to spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach.

In the time of pursuing the efficiency of high education, there is a claim that all faculties in colleges and universities should spend their time outside their professional life. Though benefits of this claim cannot be ignored, in my perspective, university is not just a machine to produce workers with high skills and this measure may lead to some bad results.

First of all, a question should be considered—what is the function of a university? The universities are schools of education and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found in either the knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to members of the faculty. The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the ability to use and create it, so it requires deep thinking and imagination. With the capacity of deep thinking, students can think critically and shape their own thoughts, which helps to improve their recognition both of the outside world and themselves. And for imagination, which is not supposed to be separated from the facts but a way of illuminating facts, it works by eliciting the principles which apply to the facts and enables men to construct an intellectual vision of a new world. As we all know, youth are imaginative, and if the imagination can be strengthened by discipline this energy of imagination can in great measure be preserved through whole lives.

Furthermore, it’s rather clear to see the serious consequences of emphasizing practical applicability too much. To begin with, the time of every individual is limited. If teachers spent too much time in the part-time job outside academic field, he would choose to reduce the amount of work in his teaching and research. As a result, the quality of teacher’s own work will be influenced. Besides, under the big environment where faculties are required to work outside their academic field, students may be influenced to view pursuing a practical job as their prior option in their college life while neglecting some much more important qualities needed to be nourished, such as imagination. What’s more, not all disciplines in university can be linked to the outside world. For instance, theoretical physics is a kind of such discipline, whose aim is to explore the unknown nature of material structure and the basic rules of physical movement on the theoretical level. Faculty and students in theoretical physics don’t need to consider the practical application.

Of course, we can't deny that the in the contemporary social environment, the measure of encouraging faculty to build a link with industries can promote some discipline to keep pace with the time. For one thing, we cannot ignore the phenomenon that expansion the class from the classroom to the practical work helps to develop students' horizons as well as the faculties’, especially in the Engineering disciplines and Business disciplines. In this way, combination of theory and practice can intrigue some new thoughts or innovation. Many great breakthroughs in Engineering fields are get in the daily practice. For another thing, faculty’s link with Industries may also make students to get a job easier. Students who aim at developing their careers in industry field can access to the relevant job before they graduate.

To be concluded, colleges and universities should correct their main functions as a place to develop the students’ thinking and imagination, and implement the policy of building a connection between field in and outside academic in different disciplines, not simply ask all faculties to do the same things.