来源：《卫报》
原文刊登日期：2023年4月24日
This week begins one of the worst deals offered by any British professional institution. Almost all universities are about to stop teaching students and subject them to pointless exams, mocks and quantification, before passing or failing them, then packing up and reassembling some months later in September. For an average price of tens of thousands of pounds a head, most students will get virtually no teaching for a good proportion of their course. From any other service – medicine, law, accountancy – this would be regarded as a scam.
本周开始了英国专业机构提供的最糟糕的交易之一。几乎所有的大学都准备停止教授学生，让他们参加毫无意义的考试、模拟和量化，通过或不及格，然后打包回家，在几个月后的9月重新返校。平均每人花费数万英镑，大多数学生在大部分课程中几乎得不到教学。从任何其他行业——医疗、法律、会计——来看，这都将被视为骗局。
The tradition of scholars teaching academic subjects part-time while doubling as researchers is a relic of medieval monasticism. Oxbridge operates for just 24 weeks a year while many other universities operate two semesters. Staff and buildings may be otherwise employed, but students will sit idle, doing odd jobs or studying on their own. No one dares challenge this system. Whitehall inspectors never declare universities “failing” or “inadequate” as they do schools.
学者兼职教授学科，同时兼任研究员的传统是中世纪修道院的遗留物。牛津剑桥一年只有24周的教学时间，而其他许多大学一年只有两个学期。工作人员和建筑可能会被利用，但学生将无所事事，做零工或自学。没有人敢挑战这个制度。英国政府的督察员从不像对普通中小学那样宣称大学“失败”或“不足”。
But the worm is turning. Last year the percentage of British school leavers going to university fell for the first time. Even before lockdown and the years of online-only teaching, a poll showed a falling demand for university among school-leavers, with just 32% being “very likely” to go in 2018. The same trend is evident in the US where college enrolments have been falling for over a decade.
但物极必反。去年，英国中学毕业生上大学的比例首次下降。甚至在封城和多年的线上教学之前，一项民意调查显示，高中毕业生对大学的需求就在下降，只有32%的人“很可能”在2018年上大学。同样的趋势在美国也很明显，十多年来，美国大学入学人数一直在下降。
Meanwhile industrial and professional apprenticeships are rising fast. At Lloyds Bank last year, 17,000 school-leavers applied for 215 vacancies. The exam bluff was called by EY’s Maggie Stilwell, who said there was “no evidence” to conclude that exam success correlated with career success. Personal qualities and professional training were what mattered. Her firm have dropped any requirement of degree classes or even A-level results from their application forms. The new “degree apprenticeships” offered by firms such as Dyson and Rolls-Royce are popular, with some 30,000 offered last year. The Institute of Student Employers records that a declining half of firms now ask for a class of degree, and a quarter explicitly state “no minimum requirements”. In Silicon Valley it is even known that an acceptance letter from Stanford University can be sufficient to secure a job. Why waste years swotting for meaningless exams?
与此同时，行业和专业学徒人数迅速增加。去年，在劳埃德银行，17000名高中毕业生申请了215个职位空缺。安永的麦琪·史迪威称考试是虚张声势，她说“没有证据”表明考试成功与事业成功有关。个人素质和专业训练才是最重要的。她的公司已经取消了求职申请表格中对学位课程甚至A-level成绩的任何要求。戴森和劳斯莱斯等公司提供的新的“学位学徒制”很受欢迎，去年提供了大约3万个。学生雇主协会的记录显示，现在有一半的公司要求提供学位等级，四分之一的公司明确表示“没有最低学位要求”。在硅谷，人们甚至知道，斯坦福大学的录取通知书足以确保一份工作。为什么要浪费时间为无意义的考试而苦读呢？
The age-old debate over whether a university is really an investment, personal or national, has never been resolved. British graduates on average earn £10,000 more than their non-graduate contemporaries, but surely some students might have done equally well with the same number of years’ work, perhaps studying a favourite subject part- or full-time later in life.
关于上大学是否是个人或国家的投资，这个由来已久的争论从未得到解决。英国大学毕业生的平均收入比非大学毕业生的同龄人多1万英镑，但当然，有些学生在工作年限相同的情况下可能也会取得同样的成绩，也许是在业余时间学习自己喜欢的学科，或者是在以后的生活中全职学习。
During his brief career as universities minister, Jo Johnson at least hinted at radicalism. He questioned the one-size-fits-all residential university. He floated shorter courses, shorter holidays, broader subjects, more intensive teaching and lifelong learning. Johnson may now have gone, but the marketplace is talking. This most reactionary of British institutions may yet be forced to waken from the sleep of ages.
在他短暂的高等教育大臣生涯中，乔·约翰逊至少暗示过激进主义。他对一刀切的住宿式大学提出了质疑。他提出缩短课程、缩短假期、拓宽学科、强化教学和终身学习。约翰逊现在可能已经走了，但市场正在讨论。这些最保守的英国机构可能还会被迫从多年的沉睡中醒来。