Professors are normally found in university classrooms, offices, and libraries doing research and lecturing to their students. More and more, however, they also appear as guests on television news programs, giving expert commentary on the latest events in the world. These television appearances are of great benefit to the professors themselves as well as to their universities and the general public.
Professors benefit from appearing on television because by doing so they acquire reputations as authorities in their academic fields among a much wider audience than they have on campus. If a professor publishes views in an academic journal, only other scholars will learn about and appreciate those views. But when a professor appears on TV, thousands of people outside the narrow academic community become aware of the professor’s ideas. So, when professors share their ideas with a television audience, the professors’ importance as scholars is enhanced.
Universities also benefit from such appearances. The universities receive positive publicity when their professors appear on TV. When people see a knowledgeable faculty member of a university on television, they think more highly of that university. That then leads to an improved reputation for the university. And that improved reputation in turn leads to more donations for the university and more applications from potential students.
Finally, the public gains from professors’ appearing on television. Most television viewers normally have no contact with university professors. When professors appear on television, viewers have a chance to learn from experts and to be exposed to views they might otherwise never hear about. Television is generally a medium for commentary that tends to be superficial, not deep or thoughtful. From professors on television, by contrast, viewers get a taste of real expertise and insight.
Lately, we’ve been seeing some professors on television. Though it’s sometimes claimed to be a good thing, we should question whether anybody really benefits from it.
The passage introduced three reasons why professors should appear on TV: gaining reputation for the professor, for the college, and to educate the general public. However, the lecture disagrees.
First of all, it’s not good for the professors themselves—not from a professional standpoint. Rightly or wrongly, a professor who appears on TV tends to get the reputation among fellow professors of being someone who is not a serious scholar—someone who chooses to entertain rather than to educate. And for that reason, TV professors may not be invited to important conferences—important meetings to discuss their academic work. They may even have difficulty getting money to do research. So, for professors, being a TV celebrity has important disadvantages.
Professors who appear frequently on TV are not generally viewed as a serious scholar. As a result, those professors will receive less invitation to attend academic conferences or less likely to receive research grant. This seriously hinders the professor’s opportunity to further grow as a researcher
A second point is that being on TV can take a lot of a professor’s time—not just the time on TV but also time figuring out what to present and time spent rehearsing, travel time, even time getting made up to look good for the cameras. And all this time comes out of the time the professor can spend doing research, meeting with students, and attending to university business. So, you can certainly see there are problems for the university and its students when professors are in the TV studio and not on campus.
Professors who frequently appear on TV also has negative effect on students and the university. Appearing on TV takes a lot of time to prepare, including preparation for the material, transportation time, and even time to dress up. This precious time can also be used to teach class, help students, or even do further research. As a result, professors who appear on TV waste a lot of time that they can contribute to teaching and research.
So, who does benefit? The public? Umm . . . that’s not so clear either. Look, professors do have a lot of knowledge to offer, but TV networks don’t want really serious, in-depth academic lectures for after-dinner viewing. What the networks want is the academic title, not the intellectual substance. The material that professors usually present on TV—such as background on current events, or some brief historical introduction to a new movie version of a great literary work—this material is not much different from what viewers would get from a TV reporter who had done a little homework.
Professors appearing on TV doesn’t usually help educating the general public. The TV network is not interested in having the professor explaining the intellectual substances of their researches. Rather, they are interested in having them explain some basic background information or history. This type of information can be easily presented by a serious reporter who has done his work properly.
Because of the above reasons, it is highly questionable whether professors appearing on TV has any advantage. In fact, it could bring negative consequence both to the professors themselves and the universities they teach.
You should understand the reasons presented in the lecture for why it is not necessarily good that professors appear on television. The lecturer questions each of the benefits mentioned in the reading passage: about the professor’s reputation, about the professor’s time, and about educating the public. A high-scoring response will include the following points made by the lecturer that address the points made in the reading passage:
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| TV appearances improve the professor’s reputation. |
invitations to academic conferences or lose research funding. |
| TV appearances benefit the university and lead to more student applications and more donations. |
Professors spend a lot of time preparing for the TV appearances, which takes away from their true academic work, such as teaching and doing research.
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| TV appearances benefit the public because the public is exposed to more in-depth knowledge about a subject. |
Professors generally do not give in-depth academic lectures on TV.
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Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
Young people enjoy life more than older people do.
Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
Topic Notes
This topic requires you to write about whether young people enjoy life more than older people do. If you agree with this statement, you should present examples and reasons. For example, young people may tend to go out more and participate in fun activities while older people may tend to stay at home more. Another reason that older people may enjoy life less is because they have more responsibilities and pressure from work, family, and money than young people. A third reason might be that young people are more physically fit and able to enjoy more activities than older people.
If you disagree with this statement in your response, you should present examples and reasons that older people enjoy life more. For example, older people may better know what satisfies them and makes them happy than young people do.
Some good responses explain that the group that enjoys life more depends on where they live. All of these approaches can be developed into a good response.
(451)
People often complain about seeing themselves becoming older too quickly. But does that mean that they are enjoying their lives less than they did before? Personally, I rather disagree with this statement. It would probably be more accurate to say that every time of a person’s life is worth being lived and enjoyed.
There is no denying that young people have far less responsibilities with, for instance, family and work. Thus, they can spend more time on their hobbies than people who are working all day long and who have to care about their children at night when they come home. But one cannot overlook that having a family to care about can be considered as a satisfying pleasure in itself. Besides, many people find fulfillment in their work and enjoy spending most of their time on it.
Moreover, it is customary to say that older people tend to have more health problems than teenagers or students do. However, it is well worth noticing that this assertion cannot be taken as a general rule, as also many young people develop painful illnesses. A striking example of a disease which tends to affect more and more teenagers is back ache, because they are sitting for too long periods of time and doing too little sport to compensate. Consequently, the argument supporting that good health makes life more enjoyable when you are young may be called into question. In addition to that, one should not forget that today’s teenagers are expected to take important decisions about their future at an early age, and that they have to cope with heavy responsibilities even before getting their first school degree. As it becomes more and more difficult to find a job these days, young people have to worry about what to study and they even often have to fix priorities according to what the job market offers, and not according to their personal preferences.
Last but not least, one cannot forget that after working hard for long years, people retire and are then given the chance to concentrate on their centers of interest and hobbies again. Up to a certain point, when taking into account the arguments if the previous paragraph concerning the early responsibilities teenagers have to assume, pensioners are even more free to enjoy their lives without thinking of potential problems of the future.
To put it in a nutshell, that all amounts to saying that there is no period of time in a person’s life which is more prone to happiness than the others. People only have to learn to make the best of every situation and of what they have . . . even if it is easier said than done!