[原创]奢华的高等教育背后的残酷现实 | 双语阅读

英国《金融时报》专栏作家拉娜·福鲁哈尔表示，在陪孩子参观完巴纳德学院和哥伦比亚大学以后，学校堪称奢华的体验和高昂的学费令她陷入了深思。

Education is a topic I’m preoccupied with, in part because the skills gap is something nearly every business person I know is concerned about (as I wrote in my column last week), but also because I’m the mother of a high school junior who’s beginning to look at colleges. Last Monday, we attended the first of the formal tours, at Barnard (my alma mater) and Columbia.

教育是我一直在思考的一个话题，一部分原因是几乎我认识的每一个商业人士都很关注技能差距这件事（就如我在不久前的专栏文章里写到的），也因为我上高三的孩子已经开始挑选想去的大学了。本月早些时候，我们第一次参加了正式的大学参观团，去了巴纳德学院（Barnard College，我的母校）和哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)。

On the one hand, the resources and opportunities were amazing, even more so than when I attended. Thousands of classes (as the Barnard tour guide told us, more than one for every student in the school), research opportunities with top professors pretty much on demand, and a variety of cultural and extracurricular offerings made me feel slightly paralysed by the tyranny of choice. Should we explore the African American model’s role in modern art? Take a virtual reality tour of the Columbia engineering school? Attend a lecture on identity and integration of Latino immigrants in Canada?

一方面，资源和机会丰富得惊人，甚至比我上学的时候更多。学校提供数千门课程（巴纳德学院的参观向导告诉我们，相当于学校里的每一名学生分一门还有余），跟随顶尖教授做研究的机会几乎是按需提供的，五花八门的文化活动和课外活动几乎让我患上选择恐惧症。我们是应该探索非裔美国模特在现代艺术中发挥的作用，还是对哥伦比亚大学工程学院进行一次虚拟现实之旅，抑或听一场关于拉丁裔移民在加拿大的身份认同和融入社会情况的演讲？

Both campuses had been significantly upgraded since I graduated in 1992, with state of the art buildings designed by top architects. The tour guides boasted about the rather phenomenal dining services. At John Jay Dining Hall, where I carb-loaded my way to the freshman 15, you can apparently now request specialty meals prepared to suit all your possible gluten-free, vegan, Paleo, double half cap soy needs. There’s even a surf and turf night where students are treated to steak and lobster served on frisbees in the communal square.

自我1992年毕业以来，这两所学校的设施都显著升级了，校园里竖立着由顶尖建筑师设计的一流水准的建筑。向导骄傲地介绍学校非同一般的餐食服务。John Jay食堂（我大一那一年在这个食堂猛吃碳水化合物，一下子增重15磅）现在看样子可以应学生的各种要求提供特殊餐食——无麸质餐、纯素食、原始人饮食餐、双份/半份大豆餐。甚至还有“海陆大餐之夜”，学生可以在公共广场上享用放在飞盘里的牛排和龙虾。

Our Barnard guide boasted of the superior counselling and group therapy services (“which is great since we’re all living in this crazy, stressed out time”), as well as the “well woman” space where students could get massages and facials. Everything that the wealthy, indebted or deeply scholarship-subsidised attendee could want, for $71,282 per year.

巴纳德学院的参观向导还自豪地告诉我们，学院提供一流的咨询和团体疗愈服务（“因为我们都生活在这个疯狂、紧张的时期，所以这真的很棒”），学院内还有一个学生可以享受按摩和面部护理的“健康女性”空间。无论学生是富有、负债，还是极度依赖奖学金，这里有他们想要的一切，只需要一年支付71282美元的学费。

I came away from these tours feeling both awestruck at the opportunities available to those in top tier American higher education and troubled by the fact that much of the marketing focused on the luxuriousness of the experience.

从这些参观团回来后，我一方面对美国一流高校提供的机会惊叹不已，一方面又对大部分营销都集中在奢华体验上感到困惑。

Psychologists have found that grit is actually the most important factor in success. But American colleges are in an arms race to attract a global pool of full fee-paying students, which has led to a trickle-down effect in which the top schools build more expensive facilities and offer more and more fabulous perks, which lesser schools then have to try and match in order to attract the top students, which in turn keep up their ratings in the all-important US News and World Report College Ranking. Without a high ranking, it’s tougher to charge nosebleed tuition.

心理学家发现，毅力才是成功最重要的因素。但美国大学正在进行一场吸引世界各地全自费学生的竞赛，这导致了一个涓滴效应：顶级高校修建更昂贵的设施，并提供越来越多你想象不到的福利，而稍微差一点的学校只得努力跟上，以吸引尖子生——正是尖子生帮助学校在至关重要的《美国新闻与世界报道》大学排名(US News and World Report College Ranking)中保住评分。没有一个高排名，很难收取令人咂舌的高昂学费。

The result is a giant bubble of debt for both the schools and the kids, which further bifurcates education and outcomes. Tuition inflation, state cuts and the fact that poorer college attendees must work while they study to pay for a four-year degree — which now costs on average 84 per cent of their family’s income — has led to terribly high dropout rates, something I’ve looked at in past columns.

结果是学校和学生双双背负了巨大的债务泡沫，进一步导致教育和结果的分歧。学费上涨、州政府削减预算，加上较贫困的在校大学生必须边上学边打工才能支付四年学费——现在平均占到他们家庭收入的84%——导致辍学率奇高，我在过去的一些专栏文章中探讨过这个问题。

Amanda Ripley wrote a terrific piece about this dysfunctional dynamic recently for the Atlantic, and I also tackled the history of it awhile back in the New York Review of Books.

阿曼达·里普利(Amanda Ripley)最近就这种出了问题的事态为《大西洋月刊》(The Atlantic)写了一篇特别棒的文章，我前一段在《纽约书评》(New York Review of Books)上也探讨了相关历史。

I felt a deep sense of cognitive dissonance following the visit. Education has been the route up for my family. My Turkish paternal grandmother was illiterate, yet her son was educated on a scholarship in the US and rose to the middle class in one generation. My maternal grandmother, the child of a Yorkshire coal miner, benefited from the British grammar school system and eventually became a nurse. My own parents, an engineer and a teacher, worked extra summer jobs to put me through college with no debt.

那次参观极大地颠覆了我的认知。我们家的人一直靠教育提升自己的社会阶层。我的土耳其祖母是文盲，但她的儿子在美国获得了奖学金，并在他这一代升到了中产阶层。我的外祖母来自约克郡煤矿工人家庭，她受益于英国文法学校系统，最终成为一名护士。我自己的父母，一个是工程师，一个是老师，为了不借债就供我念完大学，暑期他们还要额外工作。

Touring top colleges with my daughter should feel like success and, at a micro level, it does. But I, at larger level, can’t help but feeling uneasy about a system that both wraps a privileged few in seaweed masques and leaves so many others crushed by the struggle to become middle class.

带女儿去一流大学参观理应让我有种成功感，在微观层面也确实如此。但在更大的层面上，我不禁对这一系统感到不安：它给少数特权阶层贴上海藻面膜，而让其他那么多人在拼命成为中产阶层的道路上被路途的艰辛压垮。

alma mater

母校；校歌

例句：Clark has bestowed his money the old-fashioned way--by attaching his name to a building at Stanford University, his alma mater. 克拉克以古老的方式——在他的母校斯坦福大学一座建筑物上刻上自己的名字的方式——捐出了他的钱。

trickle-down effect

涓滴效应

“涓滴效应”指在经济发展过程中并不给予贫困阶层、弱势群体或贫困地区特别的优待，而是由优先发展起来的群体或地区通过消费、就业等方面惠及贫困阶层或地区，带动其发展和富裕，或认为政府财政津贴可经过大企业再陆续流入小企业和消费者之手，从而更好地促进经济增长的理论。（来自百度百科）

例句：Beijing will likely target such easing to help small businesses while aiming to avoid stimulus to the property sector, but any injection of liquidity would have a trickle-down effect. 政府此举的目的是为了帮助小企业度过难关，同时又不能刺激房产市场，不过当市场有资金注入时，慢慢的多少会有涓滴效应。