四年大学，还能让你端四十年饭碗吗？

按:混一个大学文凭，就可以吃一辈子老本了吗？在技术变革越来越快的今天恐怕是越来越不行了。经济学人特别报道关注“终身学习”，希望对你有所启发。

阅读时思考:

1. GA创始人的办学初衷是什么？
2. 哪些迹象表明教育的回报并不像以前一样明确？
3. 如何用英语表达:

• 校友机构
• 本届大学生
• 漂泊岁月
• 投资回报率
• 获得相应回报
• 沿着教育阶梯上升
• 强化此情况
• 转换车道

Learning and earning

Lifelong learning is becoming an economic imperative(1)

终身学习，经济必须(1)

Technological change demands stronger and more continuous connections between education and employment, says Andrew Palmer. The faint outlines of such a system are now emerging
技术变革要求教育和就业之间的联系更牢固、更持续，Andrew Palmer说。这样一种社会体系的模糊轮廓正在显现。
Jan 14th 2017

1. THE RECEPTION AREA contains a segment of a decommissioned Underground train carriage, where visitors wait to be collected. The surfaces are wood and glass. In each room the talk is of code, web development and data science. At first sight the London office of General Assembly looks like that of any other tech startup. But there is one big difference: whereas most firms use technology to sell their products online, General Assembly uses the physical world to teach technology. Its office is also a campus. The rooms are full of students learning and practising code, many of whom have quit their jobs to come here. Full-time participants have paid between £8,000 and £10,000 ($9,900-12,400) to learn the lingua franca of the digital economy in a programme lasting 10-12 weeks.
   对于一家IT培训公司的描写。

decommissioned: To withdraw (a ship, for example) from active service.
lingua franca: a language used between people whose main languages are different

e.g. English is the lingua franca in many countries.

1. 接待区包含一段退役的地铁车厢，访客们等待被迎接。建筑物的表面是木材和玻璃打造的。在每个房间里，人们谈论的都是代码，Web开发和数据科学。一开始，General Assembly伦敦办事处看起来跟任何其他科技创业公司一样。但是有一个很大的区别：大多数公司使用科技在线销售他们的产品，而General Assembly面对面教授技术。它的办公室也是一个校园。房间里充满了学习和练习代码的学生，他们中的很多人已经辞了他们的工作来到这里。全日制学员在10-12周的课程中花费8,000英镑到10,000英镑（9,900-12,400美元）来学​​习数字经济的通用语言。

2. General Assembly, with campuses in 20 cities from Seattle to Sydney, has an alumni body of around 35,000 graduates. Most of those who enroll for full-time courses expect them to lead to new careers. The company’s curriculum is based on conversations with employers about the skills they are critically short of. It holds “meet and hire” events where firms can see the coding work done by its students. Career advisers help students with their presentation and interview techniques. General Assembly measures its success by how many of its graduates get a paid, permanent, full-time job in their desired field. Of its 2014-15 crop, three-quarters used the firm’s career-advisory services, and 99% of those were hired within 180 days of beginning their job hunt.
   GA的业务情况介绍，引出终身学习的话题。

crop: group of people or quantity of things appearing or produced at the same time （同时出现或产生的）一群（人）, 一批（事物）
e.g. this year's crop of students 本届大学生
e.g. The programme brought quite a crop of complaints from viewers. 该节目招致观众诸多不满.

2）General Assembly在从西雅图到悉尼的20个城市都有校园，有一个大约35,000毕业生的校友机构。大多数注册全日制课程的学生期望他们能够这些课程能带来新的职业发展。该公司的课程是基于雇主提出的、他们极其需要的技能。GA会举办“见面和招聘”活动，用人公司可以见证由学生们完成的编码工作。职业顾问帮助学生提升演讲和面试技巧。GA通过有多少毕业生在他们所期望的领域获得有偿的、永久的、全职的工作来衡量其成功。在其2014-15年毕业生中，有四分之三使用了该公司的职业咨询服务，其中99％是在他们开始找工作的180天内被雇佣的。

3. The company’s founder, Jake Schwartz, was inspired to start the company by two personal experiences: a spell of drifting after he realised that his degree from Yale conferred no practical skills, and a two-year MBA that he felt had cost too much time and money: “I wanted to change the return-on-investment equation in education by bringing down the costs and providing the skills that employers were desperate for.”
   GA创始人的办学初衷:降低教育的投资回报率。

a spell of: a period of a particular kind of activity, weather, illness etc, usually a short period
e.g. After a brief spell in the army, I returned to teaching.
e.g. a spell of bad luck

3. 该公司的创始人杰克·施瓦茨（Jake Schwartz）受到了两段个人经历的启发：从耶鲁毕业后的一段漂泊岁月让他意识到大学并没有教授任何实用技能，并且他觉得两年的MBA花费了太多的时间和金钱：“我想通过降低成本和提供雇主所渴望的技能来改变教育投资回报等式。

4. In rich countries the link between learning and earning has tended to follow a simple rule: get as much formal education as you can early in life, and reap corresponding rewards for the rest of your career. The literature suggests that each additional year of schooling is associated with an 8-13% rise in hourly earnings. In the period since the financial crisis, the costs of leaving school early have become even clearer. In America, the unemployment rate steadily drops as you go up the educational ladder.
   教育程度和收入的正向关系。
   4）在富裕国家，学习和收入之间的联系往往遵循一个简单的原则：在你生命早期获得尽可能多的正规教育，在你接下来的职业生涯中获得相应的回报。文献表明，每增加一年的学校教育，每小时收入增加8-13％。在金融危机后的这段时间，提早离开学校的代价变得更加清楚。在美国，当你沿着教育阶梯上升，失业率稳步下降。

5. Many believe that technological change only strengthens the case for more formal education. Jobs made up of routine tasks that are easy to automate or offshore have been in decline. The usual flipside of that observation is that the number of jobs requiring greater cognitive skill has been growing. The labour market is forking, and those with college degrees will naturally shift into the lane that leads to higher-paying jobs.
   很多人还是认为更多的正规教育必不可少。

flipside: a different aspect of something (especially the opposite aspect)
forking: the act of branching out or dividing into branches

5）许多人认为，技术变革只会强化人们需要更多正规教育的情况。由易于自动化或离岸外包的日常任务所构成的工作已经减少。这个现象通常的另外一面是，需要更高认知能力的工作数量在不断增加。劳动力市场的道路是分岔的，拥有大学学位的人自然会转向通向高薪工作的快车道。

6. The reality seems to be more complex. The returns to education, even for the high-skilled, have become less clear-cut. Between 1982 and 2001 the average wages earned by American workers with a bachelor’s degree rose by 31%, whereas those of high-school graduates did not budge, according to the New York Federal Reserve. But in the following 12 years the wages of college graduates fell by more than those of their less educated peers. Meanwhile, tuition costs at universities have been rising.
   然而，教育的回报并不像以前一样明确。

clear-cut: easy to understand or be certain about = definite
e.g. There is not always a clear-cut distinction between right and wrong.
budge: to move slightly; to make sth/sb move slightly

6）现实情况似乎更为复杂。教育的回报，即使是对于高技能的人，也变得不那么清晰了。根据纽约联邦储备委员会的数据，1982年至2001年期间，美国工人获得学士学位的平均工资增长了31％，而高中毕业生的平均工资没有增加。但在接下来的12年中，大学毕业生的工资下降幅度高于其受教育程度较低的同龄人。同时，大学的学费成本也在不断上升。