大学的意义

Ｔｏｍａｓ　Ｈｉｒｓｔ

University is seen as a place where young adults, and I use that term cautiously, can let their hair down for three (or more) years, drink, party and generally have a good time. It is, for many, the first opportunity to experience life outside of the parental nest, where being fed, clothed, cleaned up after and organised are suddenly no longer rights but personal responsibilities.

人们将大学视为青年人(我慎重地使用这一词)尽情享受三年(或更长)好时光的地方,喝酒,聚会,过得开心自在。对于许多人来说,这是第一次体验离开家长所营造的安乐窝的生活。突然之间,吃穿住行不再是坐享其成,而成了个人的义务。

Ultimately, however, university is supposed to have a purpose, a meaning behind the madness. It's supposed to give you not just life skills but training that will allow you to become a productive member of the workforce. So what can a graduate having studied a non-vocational subject for three years offer a potential employer? Apparently not very much.

然而,在疯狂的背后,大学最终应该有目的和意义。它不仅给你生存的技能,还将使你成为对社会有贡献的人。一名受了三年非职业教育的毕业生能给可能的雇主带去什么呢?显然不多。

A friend who works for Lloyd's of London recently told me that he would rather employ someone who had 'lived in the real world' for a few years than a recent graduate. His logic was that graduates are taught abstract ideas and encouraged to write essays with distant deadlines, neither of which prepares them for the pressing demands of work.

近日,一位在劳埃德船舶保险公司工作的朋友告诉我,他宁可雇佣“在真实世界生活”几年的人,也愿不雇佣刚毕业的大学生。他的逻辑是,毕业生学的是抽象概念,写的是标题空洞的论文,这些都不能使他们达到工作的迫切要求。

The fact that the overall number of students has almost doubled in the UK over the past decade to just under 2.5 million in 2005/6 means that simply having a degree has lost at least some of its value in the eyes of employers. This has massively increased the importance of career-orientated work experience so that companies can train potential future employees in the job before they officially begin to work for them. This is not only energy saving but cost effective for the employer as the work experience is usually either low paid or completely unpaid. It also, however, means that only those who can afford not to work during breaks from university can truly reap the benefits.

近十年来,英国大学生总数几乎翻了一番,2005-2006年度,人数已接近250万,这意味着在雇主眼中,学历已经贬值。因此,以职业为导向的工作经验的重要性大大增加,公司可以在将来的雇员正式为其工作前对他们进行培训。对于雇主来说,这不仅节省精力,还节约成本,因为雇员实习往往薪水很少,甚至是免费的。不过,这也意味着只有那些假期时不需工作的人才能真正得到实惠。

On top of this, students whose parents have high-earning jobs will be in a much better position to gain work experience either directly with their parents or through their business contacts. The inevitable effect of this is to widen the social gap between the well off and people from less wealthy backgrounds and reaffirm the problems of the class-based structure that the government is so keen to announce that it has abolished.

除此之外,家长收入高的学生能更方便地获得工作经验,无论是和家长一起工作,还是通过家长的业务伙伴找到机会。这就不可避免地造成出身富裕与出身贫穷学生之间的差距拉大,并且再次证实基于阶级的结构问题,而政府却急切地宣布这一问题已得到解决。

Furthermore if career-orientated work experience is becoming a requirement for employment then the implication is that students should have decided upon a career before applying for university. Not only does this undermine the study of almost all non-vocational subjects (unless if the student plans a career in academia), but it also further narrows the breadth of education that is received by students in Britain. In the US, the first year of study at university provides introductory classes in a range of subjects that encourages students to sample a large variety of areas before specialising. Harvard University, for example, has have what it calls core curriculum whereby:

此外,如果以职业为导向的工作经验成了雇佣的要求之一,那么这就意味着,学生应该在申请大学之前就决定未来从事什么职业。这不仅会损害几乎所有非职业课程(除非学生打算从事学术),而且会进一步压缩英国学生所受教育的范围。在美国,大学第一年会开设许多专业的介绍性课程,鼓励学生体验不同的领域,再来选择专业。比如,哈佛大学有着其所称的核心课程:

Undergraduates must devote almost a quarter of their studies to courses in the following areas of the programme: foreign cultures, historical study, literature and arts, moral reasoning, quantitative reasoning, science, and social analysis.

本科生必须把将近四分之一的学习用于以下课程:外国文化、历史研究、文学与艺术、道德推理、定量推理、自然科学和社会分析。

Britain, in contrast, forces its students to pick their specialisation before they have even finished their A-level course. To effectively make career-targeted work experience a mandatory addition to a graduate's CV is to force the choice of a future career at a very early stage of development and therefore further limit the choices that the student will have later on.

相反,英国则要求学生在高级水平课程还未结束时就选择他们主修的课程。为使毕业生简历上都有以职业为目标的工作经验,英国强制要求学生在成长的早期阶段就选择将来的职业,这再次限制了学生将来选择的余地。

The government's aim to have 50% of school leavers in university by 2010 is only likely to exacerbate the problem. If employers want students to have particular skills within their chosen field then the arts subjects, save for those who want to become artists, writers or academics, will become effectively pointless, producing ever increasing numbers of people who will leave university no more employable than when they arrived. A survey published recently suggests that students may already be feeling the effects of this pressure as 20% of new students fail to complete their course.

政府计划到2010年有50%中学生上大学,此举可能只会加剧这一问题。如果雇主希望学生在其选定的领域内有特定技能的话,那文科课程(想成为艺术家、作家或学者的人除外)就会变得无关紧要,培养出来的人不比刚进大学时更符合雇佣要求。最近一份调查显示,学生已经感到这种压力,有20%的大学新生未能完成其课程。

As a graduate of the arts myself I am not suggesting that the country requires a return to the two-tier system of the universities and the polytechnics, but a change in policy by both the government and employers must be countenanced. The priorities and demands of the two seem to be progressively more at odds with each other, making some parts of the job market nearly inaccessible to many newly made graduates. It seems ridiculous for any government to set such specific educational targets and put so much strain on Britain's educational infrastructure if the market does not appear to demand them.

作为文科毕业生,我不是建议国家回归综合大学与理工科大学并存的二元制,而是政府和雇主必须改变政策。二者的重点与需求往往不一致,使得许多大学毕业新生无法进入部分就业市场。任何政府设定如此具体的教育目标都是很可笑的,如果市场不予以接受,英国的教育将承受巨大的压力。

Equally, however, employers must develop new ways of distinguishing between candidates without discriminating against those who have not enjoyed access to their chosen career before graduating. With the introduction of top-up fees it seems that more than ever the biggest thing that students are getting from attending university is debt.

同样,雇主应该开发区分应征者的新途径,不应该歧视那些在毕业前没有相关行业工作经验的人。有了附加学费之后,似乎学生上大学的最大收获是债务,这已越来越明显。