I know what you mean, but this is correct french, as in the french use it to denote the exact same thing.[1] There are many French phrases that change meaning as they are ported to English, but this is not one of there.
Raison d'etre means "reason for existence" and it refers to a particular thing. The problem is that "why studying algorithms is important" does not describe a thing, so you can ask yourself: the reason for existence OF WHAT?. "raison d'etre of algorithm classes" or "raison d'etre of algorithm research" would be grammatically correct phrasing. Why use fancy words only to get basic sentence structure wrong?
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I speak french and this is the correct use.
It's not really french though, more like french words that are used and are now part of the english language.
Raison d'être just means 'why is it there'.
I know what you mean, but this is correct french, as in the french use it to denote the exact same thing.[1] There are many French phrases that change meaning as they are ported to English, but this is not one of there.
[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raison_d%27%C3%AAtre_(homonymie...
Raison d'etre means "reason for existence" and it refers to a particular thing. The problem is that "why studying algorithms is important" does not describe a thing, so you can ask yourself: the reason for existence OF WHAT?. "raison d'etre of algorithm classes" or "raison d'etre of algorithm research" would be grammatically correct phrasing. Why use fancy words only to get basic sentence structure wrong?
See also: http://grammarist.com/usage/raison-detre/