[Economist] 学习与收入（一）

继续经济学人，这次有点长，先发一部分

Learning and earning

学习与收入

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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
“科技的快速发展促使教育和就业之间的关系将变得更加紧密和持续”，Andrew Palmer 说道。这样的未来场景正在逐渐被勾勒显现出来。

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.
在接待处有一节退役的地铁车厢，在那访客们正等着被招待。那里的表面由木材和玻璃租场。在每个房间中，人们谈论着代码、网络发展和数据科学。第一眼望去，London office of General Assembly 和别的教育发展机构没什么区别。但他们的重大差别在于，大多数机构通过技术来在线售卖他们的产品，而 London office of General Assembly 则在现实世界来教授技术知识。这个办公室同样是一个校园。房间中坐满了学生，他们学习和练习编程技能，许多学生辞退工作到这儿来学习。全日制的学生要花费 8000 到 10000 英镑（9900-12400美元）来进行一个为期 10 到 12 周的学习计划，他们将学习数字经济时代的通用语。

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.
这个大会拥有从西雅图到悉尼等 20 个城市的学校，有大约 35000 名毕业生。在这参与全日制学习的学生大多数都是期望以此重新开始工作生涯。通过和招聘单位的交流得知目前所紧缺的岗位，学校设计了自己的教学计划。通过“招聘会”的形式来让招聘公司了解到学院学生的编程成果。就业指导员来教导学生面试的技巧。大会通过有多少毕业生得到了理想的全职长期的带薪工作来评价自身成绩。在 2014-15 年份中，四分之三的学员使用了就业指导服务，其中 99% 的学员在开始找工作之后的 180 天内实现了就业。

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.”
公司的创始人，Jake Schwartz 因为两个个人经历而创办了这家企业：当他发现耶鲁大学的学位并没有给他带来实际工作技能后的迷茫以及两年的 MBA 课程花费了太多的时间和金钱。“我想要通过减少教育花费和提供招聘企业所急需的技能来改变教育中投资和回报的等式。”

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.
在富裕国家，学习和教育之间的关系似乎是遵循着一个简单的规律：在人生刚开始的时候获得的正式教育越多，在之后的执业盛业所获取的回报就越大。数据告诉我们在学习生涯每长一年，工作之后的时薪就会增长 8%-13% 。在经济危机之后，较早的结束学习生涯的代价变得愈加明显。在美国，失业率随着教育水平的上升而稳定下降。

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 flip side 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.
许多人认为科技的进步仅仅是加强了更多正式教育的效果。那些很容易被自动化和离岸所代替的机械劳动的岗位正在减少。这种现状的观察的反面结论就是那些需要更多认知技能的岗位正在增加。劳动市场正在分化，那些拥有大学学位的职员将自然地进入高薪工作的快车道。

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.
现实生活则更加复杂。New York Federal Reserve 的研究指出，即使是对于高技能的职工，教育所带来的的回报也变得逐渐模糊。在 1982 和 2001 年之间，拥有学士学位的美国工人的平均工资增加了 31% ，而同时期那些高中毕业的工人则完全没有变化。但是在之后的 12 年间，大学毕业生工资的下降水平则高于那些受教育水平较低的工人。同时，大学教育的花费则逐步增加。