经济学人阅读｜扉页文章 The absent student

08.13｜经济学人阅读｜扉页文章 The absent student

经济学人The Economist是一份英国的英文新闻周报，分八个版本于每周五向全球发行，编辑部位于伦敦，创办于1843年9月。

经济学人是一本综合性新闻评论刊物，有商业、国家和地区、经济和金融、科学和技术五大类。其中文章文风紧凑且严谨，对语言精准运用，展现出一种克制的风趣幽默，常运用双关语调侃。

经济学人对于英语考试的重要性不言而喻，其文章常常出现在雅思托福、SAT、GRE、GMAT、考研英语、四六级、MTI和CATTI的阅读理解真题中。

今天给大家分享的是经济学人2020年8月8日期刊中的扉页文章：The absent student。

这篇文章主要讲了今年夏天高校无法复学的情况。作者提到由于新冠疫情的爆发，学生的学习变得困难，学校也将损失大量收入。高校每年耗费巨额财政支出，但社会生产率却没有显著上升，学生在毕业后也无法获得太好的收入。作者称如果这次的疫情能够使各大历史悠久的高校为此做出改革，那也不妨为一件好事。

01

The absent student

缺席的学生

IN THE NORMAL run of things, late summer sees airports in the emerging world fill with nervous 18-year-olds, jetting off to begin a new life in the rich world’s universities. The annual trek of more than 5m students is a triumph of globalisation. Students see the world; universities get a fresh batch of high-paying customers. Yet with flights grounded and borders closed, this migration is about to become the pandemic’s latest victim.

For students, covid-19 is making life difficult. Many must choose between inconveniently timed seminars streamed into their parents’ living rooms and inconveniently deferring their studies until life is more normal. For universities, it is disastrous. They will not only lose huge chunks of revenue from foreign students but, because campus life spreads infection, they will have to transform the way they operate.

在正常情况下，每当夏末来临，在发展中国家的机场到处都能看到面容紧张的18岁年轻人，他们飞奔前往发达国家，并在那里的大学中开始新的生活。每年500多万名学生的出国留学是全球化成功的表现。学生可以看到外面的世界；大学也可以获得了一批新的客户。然而，随着航班停飞和边界关闭，这种留学将成为疫情的最新受害者。

对于学生来说，新冠病毒使生活变得困难。要么在不恰当的时间在父母的客厅中参加研讨会，要么将学习推迟到能够正常生活的时候进行，很多人都必须对此做出选择。而对于大学来说，这是灾难性的。 他们不仅会从外国学生那里损失大量收入，而且由于校园生活会传播病毒，大学将不得不改变其运营方式。

02

Yet the disaster may have an upside. For many years government subsidies and booming demand have allowed universities to resist changes that could benefit both students and society. They may not be able to do so for much longer.

Higher education has been thriving. Since 1995, as the notion spread from the rich world to the emerging one that a degree from a good institution was essential, the number of young people enrolling in higher education rose from 16% of the relevant age group to 38%. The results have been visible on swanky campuses throughout the Anglosphere, whose better universities have been the principal beneficiaries of the emerging world’s aspirations.

然而，这场灾难可能还会上升。多年来，政府的补贴和不断增长的需求使大学拒绝进行对学生和社会都有利的变革。但他们无法一直这样下去。

高等教育蓬勃发展。自1995年以来，获得一个良好学位是必不可少的观念，已经从发达国家传播到新兴国家。因此，接受高等教育的年轻人人数从16％上升到38％。这一结果在盎格鲁国家中的校园里可见一斑，他们拥有更好的大学，他们也是新兴国家的学生求学过程中的主要受益者。

03

Yet troubles are piling up. China has been a source of high-paying foreign students for Western universities, but relations between the West and China are souring. Students with ties to the army are to be banned from America.

Governments have been turning against universities, too. In an age when politics divides along educational lines, universities struggle to persuade some politicians of their merit. President Donald Trump attacks them for “Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education”. Some 59% of Republican voters have a negative view of colleges; just 18% of Democrats do. In Britain universities’ noisy opposition to Brexit has not helped. Given that the state pays for between a quarter and a half of tertiary education in America, Australia and Britain, through student loans and grants, the government’s enthusiasm matters.

然而麻烦正在不断堆积。中国一直是西方大学高额学费外国留学生的来源，但西方与中国之间的关系正在恶化。与军队有联系的学生将被禁止进入美国。

政府也一直在反对大学。在政治分化为教育路线的时代，大学努力用自己的作用去说服政客。唐纳德·特朗普总统攻击他们是“激进的左教化，而不是教育”。 大约59％的共和党选民对大学持否定态度。但只有18％的民主党人会这样认为。 在英国，大学对英国退欧的反对并没有起到作用。美国、澳大利亚和英国四分之一至一半的高等教育费用都是用于发放学生贷款和助学金，因此政府的对大学的态度至关重要。

04

Scepticism among politicians is not born only of spite. Governments invest in higher education to boost productivity by increasing human capital. But even as universities have boomed, productivity growth in the rich-country economies has fallen. Many politicians suspect that universities are not teaching the right subjects, and are producing more graduates than labour markets need. Small wonder that the state is beginning to pull back. In America government spending on universities has been flat in recent years; in Australia, even as the price of humanities degrees doubles, so it will fall for subjects the government deems good for growth.

政治家之间的怀疑主义的产生并非仅因为恶意。政府投资了高等教育，是希望通过增加人力资本来提高生产率。但是，即使大学蓬勃发展，发达国家的生产率仍在下降。因此许多政客怀疑大学是否有教授正确的知识，而每年的毕业生却超过了劳动力市场所需的数量。 毫不奇怪，这种状态正在开始回落。近年来美国政府在大学方面的支出一直持平。在澳大利亚，即使是被认为对政府有利人文学位的价格翻了一番，但政府的补助也还是在下跌。

05

There are questions about the benefits to students, too. The graduate premium is healthy enough, on average, for a degree to be financially worthwhile, but not for everybody. In Britain the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has calculated that a fifth of graduates would be better off if they had never gone to university. In America four in ten students still do not graduate six years after starting their degree—and, for those who do, the wage premium is shrinking. Across the world as a whole, student enrolment continues to grow, but in America it declined by 8% in 2010-18.

对于学生的好处也存在疑问。平均而言，毕业生获得学位从经济上来说是值得的，但并非所有人都是这样。在英国财政研究所的统计显示，如果学生们从未上过大学，那么五分之一的毕业生的生活会更好。在美国，有十分之四的学生在进入大学后的六年内仍未毕业，而对于那些毕业的人来说，工资溢价正在缩小。在全球范围内，学生入学率持续增长，但在美国，于2010-2018年度入学率下降了8％。

06

Then came covid-19. Although recessions tend to boost demand for higher education, as poor job prospects spur people to seek qualifications, revenues may nevertheless fall. Government rules will combine with student nerves to keep numbers down. Last month the Trump administration said new foreign students would not be allowed to enter the country if their classes had moved online. Sydney, Melbourne, UNSW and Monash, four of Australia’s leading universities, rely on foreign students for a third of their income. The IFS expects losses at English universities to amount to over a quarter of one year’s revenues.

然后是新冠病毒。经济衰退往往会增加对高等教育的需求，因为糟糕的工作前景会刺激人们去寻求更高的学历，尽管收入可能会下降。但政府的规定与学生的紧张情绪结合在一起，使入学的人数减少。特朗普政府上个月表示，如果新的外国学生的班级丢转移到网上进行，那么将不允许他们进入美国。悉尼，墨尔本，新南威尔士和莫纳什是澳大利亚四所顶尖大学，其收入的三分之一来自外国学生。英国财政研究所预计英语大学的损失将占一年收入的四分之一以上。

07

The damage from covid-19 means that, in the short term at least, universities will be more dependent on governments than ever. The IFS reckons that 13 universities in Britain risk going bust. Governments ought to help colleges, but should favour institutions that provide good teaching and research or benefit their community. Those that satisfy none of those criteria should be allowed to go to the wall.

Those that survive must learn from the pandemic. Until now most of them, especially the ones at the top of the market, have resisted putting undergraduate courses online. That is not because remote teaching is necessarily bad—a third of graduate students were studying fully online last year—but because a three- or four-year degree on campus was universities’ and students’ idea of what an undergraduate education should look like. Demand for the services of universities was so intense that they had no need to change.

新冠病毒对大学造成的损害意味着，至少在短期内，大学将比以往更加依赖政府。英国财政研究所认为英国的13所大学可能会破产。政府应帮助大学，但应偏向那些提供良好教学研究或对社区有益的大学。那些不满足这些条件的大学则应允许他们破产。

那些幸存下来的大学必须从疫情中学习。 到目前为止，大多数大学，特别是那些处于市场顶端的大学，都拒绝将本科课程设置为在线。这不是因为远程教学可能效果会很糟糕（去年三分之一的研究生完全在网上学习），而是因为在大学获得三年或四年制学位是大学和学生对本科教育的看法。对他们大学服务的需求如此之大，因此他们不需要改变。

08

Now change is being forced upon them. The College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College says that less than a quarter of American universities are likely to teach mostly or wholly in person next term. If that persists, it will reduce the demand. Many students buy the university experience not just to boost their earning capacity, but also to get away from their parents, make friends and find partners. But it should also cut costs, by giving students the option of living at home while studying.

现在，改变被迫施加在他们身上。戴维森学院的大学危机倡议组织说，下学期只有不到四分之一的美国大学主要或全部线下授课。如果这种情况持续下去，对大学求学的需求将会减少。 许多学生进入大学不仅是为了提高他们的收入水平，而且是为了摆脱父母，结交朋友和寻找伴侣。但是让学生在家学习和生活，将削减其学习成本。

09

Covid-19 is catalysing innovation, too. The Big Ten Academic Alliance, a group of midwestern universities, is offering many of its 600,000 students the opportunity to take online courses at other universities in the group. There is huge scope for using digital technology to improve education. Poor in-person lectures could be replaced by online ones from the best in the world, freeing up time for the small-group teaching which students value most.

Universities are rightly proud of their centuries-old traditions, but their ancient pedigrees have too often been used as an excuse for resisting change. If covid-19 shakes them out of their complacency, some good may yet come from this disaster.

新冠病毒也在促进创新。由中西部大学组成的十大学术联盟为60万名学生中的许多人提供了在该组其他大学中参加在线课程的机会。利用数字技术改善教育的范围很大。难以进行的面对面授课可以被世界上最好的在线授课所取代，从而为学生最重视的小组教学腾出了时间。

大学理所当然地为其悠久的传统感到自豪，但其古老的血统书经常被用作抵制变革的借口。如果新冠病毒使他们摆脱了自满，那么这场灾难可能带来了一些好处。

经济学人一般目录大纲：

The world this week：简单梳理本周的时事Leaders：社论，对本周热点事件进行评论Briefing：简报，对一个特定热点话题深度讨论Letter：读者来信，对往期文章的评论Sections：各大洲及中美英三国的本周热点事件报道Business：商业新闻Finances and economics：财经新闻Science and technology：科技新闻Books and arts：文化书籍，书评和文化现象讨论Economic and financial indicators：商业及财经指数

Buttonwood：金融专栏Schumpeter：商业专栏Bartleby：职场专栏Bagehot：英国专栏Charlemagne：欧洲专栏Lexington：美国专栏Banyan：亚洲专栏