I ask about teaching differently partly because, when I taught a databasing class over the summer, I tried to base their project on a database I actually built in my job. Same type of data, same type of requirements, just with a lot fewer errors in the data. I think the project I would have given them if I had never worked in industry would have been much different. I also feel like I wouldn’t be able to respond to the complaints of “Why do we have to learn this? We’ll never need this!” nearly as well. (I understand the complaints. I made them myself. Then I ended up building databases while working in a job that had nothing to do with databases, simply because I was the only one who knew how.)

Partly this post is coming from my essay, which is about the debate over the link (or lack thereof) between teaching and research. Some people argue that a good college teacher must also be an active researcher. However, many of the arguments they make could also be applied to former industry professionals in fields like engineering. I’m curious if anyone’s ever really looked into that, from an education research standpoint.