A Smart Way to Skip College in Pursuit of a Job
不必上大學，也能找到好工作？
Could an online degree earned in six to 12 months bring a revolution to higher education?
一項用六到12個月完成的在線學位能否帶來一場高等教育革命？
This week, AT&T and Udacity, the online education company founded by the Stanford professor and former Google engineering whiz Sebastian Thrun, announced something meant to be very small: the “NanoDegree.”
本周（本文最初發表于2014年6月17日——編注），美國AT&T公司與斯坦福大學(Stanford University)教授、前谷歌公司(Google)工程天才塞巴斯蒂安·特隆(Sebastian Thrun)創建的在線教育公司Udacity宣布，將推出一種看起來應該很小的東西：“納米學位(NanoDegree)”。
At first blush, it doesn’t appear like much. For $200 a month, it is intended to teach anyone with a mastery of high school math the kind of basic programming skills needed to qualify for an entry-level position at AT&T as a data analyst, iOS applications designer or the like.
乍一看，它似乎的確不大。這項學位課程每月收費200美元，旨在向任何一位掌握高中數學的學員傳授足以勝任AT&T公司入門級工作（比如數據分析師，iOS應用設計師等等）的基本編程技能。
Yet this most basic of efforts may offer more than simply adding an online twist to vocational training. It may finally offer a reasonable shot at harnessing the web to provide effective schooling to the many young Americans for whom college has become a distant, unaffordable dream.
然而，這些最基礎的努力所提供的，可能不僅僅是為職業培訓增添一個在線噱頭那么簡單。對于許多美國年輕人來說，上大學已經成為一個遙不可及且無法承受的夢想。最終，這項課程或將成為一個利用互聯網為這些年輕人提供有效教育的機會。
Intriguingly, it suggests that the best route to democratizing higher education may require taking it out of college.
有趣的是，這項課程表明，實現高等教育大眾化的最佳途徑，或許就是讓它走出大學校園。
“We are trying to widen the pipeline,” said Charlene Lake, an AT&T spokeswoman. “This is designed by business for the specific skills that are needed in business.”
“我們正在努力擴大渠道，”AT&T公司女發言人沙琳·雷克(Charlene Lake)說。“這是一項由企業設計，專門培養企業所需技能的課程。”
Mr. Thrun sounded more ambitious about the ultimate goal: “It is like a university,” he told me, “built by industry.”
特隆的終極目標聽起來更具雄心：“這就像是一所由產業界建立的大學，”他告訴我。
American higher education is definitely in need of some disruption. Once the leader in educational attainment, the United States has been overtaken by a growing number of its peers.
美國高等教育肯定需要經受一些創造性破壞。美國的國民受教育程度曾經傲視全球，但現在已經被越來越多的國家超越。
Education still offers children from disadvantaged families their best chance at climbing the ladder of success. David H. Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reports in a new study that in 2012 a typical family of graduates from a four-year college earned about $58,000 more than a family of high school graduates.
教育依然給貧困家庭子女提供了攀登成功階梯的最好機會。麻省理工學院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)的戴維·H·奧托(David H. Autor)在一份最新研究報告中指出，2012年，一個由四年制大學畢業生組成的家庭通常要比一個由高中畢業生組成的家庭多掙大約5.8萬美元。
But this very statistic underscores the depth of the nation’s educational deficit. One reason for the enormous payoff from a college degree, which is almost twice as big as it was in 1979, Mr. Autor finds, is that too few young Americans — despite a bump in enrollment right after the Great Recession — ever earn one.
但這組統計數據也恰恰突顯了美國教育赤字的嚴重程度。奧托發現，大學學位能夠帶來巨大收益，而且現在的收益幾乎是1979年的兩倍。原因之一是，盡管美國大學的招生人數在大衰退(Great Recession)后顯著上升，但獲得大學學位的美國年輕人依然太少。
Employers have been complaining for years about a lack of skilled workers to fill available jobs. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the skill level of the American work force is slipping dangerously behind other nations.
雇主多年來一直抱怨，能夠填補崗位的熟練技術工人嚴重不足。根據經濟合作與發展組織(OECD)提供的數據，美國勞動力的技能水平正在非常危險地下滑到其他國家之后。
And yet despite the promise of a higher wage, only about half of high school graduates from low-income families enrolled in college in 2012 — compared with 80 percent of high-income graduates. Worse, only a small share of them manage to finish.
然而，盡管大學畢業生有更好的收入前景，但在2012年，僅有大約一半低收入家庭高中畢業生跨入大學校門，高收入高中畢業生上大學的比例則高達80%。更糟的是，只有一小部分低收入學生最終完成了大學學業。
According to research by Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski of the University of Michigan, the college graduation rate of Americans from affluent families rose from less than 40 percent for those born in the early 1960s to nearly 55 percent for those born around 1980. For students from the bottom quarter of the income distribution, it inched up to 9 percent from 5 percent.
密歇根大學(University of Michigan)的瑪莎·貝利(Martha J. Bailey)和蘇珊·戴納斯基(Susan M. Dynarski )的研究顯示，美國富家子弟的大學畢業率從不到40%（1960年代早期出生的學生）增長至近55%（1980年左右出生的學生）。對于來自收入分配底部四分之一的學生來說，這個比率僅僅從5%微升至9%。
With tuition rising around the country and states cutting the budgets of their public university systems, many disadvantaged students are left at the mercy of unscrupulous degree mills that promise good jobs on graduation but often discharge young adults with only limited employment prospects and a crushing burden of debt.
隨著全美大學學費普遍上漲，以及各州紛紛削減公立大學預算，許多貧困學生不得不任憑肆無忌憚的學位工廠擺布。它們對青年學子承諾，畢業后肯定能找到好工作，但當學生們真正走出校園時，他們往往面臨非常有限的就業機會和難以承受的債務負擔。
Scholars have proposed several strategies to improve the job prospects of disadvantaged students. In a proposal to be released this week by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, Harry J. Holzer of Georgetown University urges states to provide incentives to universities to steer students toward higher-wage occupations, including tying college funding formulas to the wages of graduates five years after graduation.
學者們已經提出了幾項旨在改善弱勢學生就業前景的策略。在布魯金斯學會(Brookings Institution)漢密爾頓計劃(Hamilton Project)本周發布的一項提議中，喬治敦大學(Georgetown University )的哈里·霍爾澤(Harry J. Holzer)呼吁各州采取措施來激勵大學引導學生從事工資更高的職業，比如各州可以把大學經費的撥款方案與大學生畢業五年后的薪資水平掛鉤。
It is easy to oversell technology’s ability to close some of these gaps. When they were introduced a few years ago, the Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, offered by the likes of Udacity, Coursera or edX, the joint venture between Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were promoted as the best way to close the opportunity gap.
人們很容易過度贊譽高科技彌合這些差距的能力。幾年前，當Udacity、Coursera或哈佛大學(Harvard University)和麻省理工學院合作創建的edX等大型開放式網絡課程(MOOC)相繼涌現的時候，它們被推崇為填補機遇差距的最佳方式。
But putting traditional college courses online may do little to close the gap. Instead, the evidence so far suggests that online education may do better in giving low-income students a leg up if it is directly tied to work. And companies, rather than colleges, may be best suited to shape the curriculum.
但僅僅把傳統的大學課程放在網上，或許無助于縮小差距。但是，迄今為止的證據表明，如果網絡教育直接與工作相關聯，它或許能夠給予低收入學生更大的幫助。最適合設計課程的或許是公司，而不是大學。
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, found that most students lost interest in its MOOCs within two weeks and, in general, fewer than 10 percent completed the course.
例如，賓夕法尼亞大學(University of Pennsylvania)的研究人員發現，大多數學生在兩個星期內就對MOOC失去了興趣，通常情況下，完成在線課程的學生僅有不到10%。
Moreover, those engaging with online education mostly have not been the young people who might benefit most from the free coursework. “The people who have taken up these opportunities are not the needy of the world,” said Fiona M. Hollands of Columbia University’s Teachers College. “They are not democratizing education. They are making courses widely available, but the wrong crowd is showing up.”
此外，在線教育的大多數參與者并不是可能會從這種免費課程中受益最多的年輕人。“抓住這些機會的并不是最有需要的人，”哥倫比亞大學師范學院(Columbia University’s Teachers College)教授菲奧娜·霍蘭茨(Fiona M. Hollands)這樣說道。“這些在線教育平臺不是在推動教育民主化。現如今，這些課程隨處可得，但參與群體有問題。”
A review of MOOCs co-written by Professor Hollands concluded that the typical community college student often did not have the literacy or the drive necessary to benefit from courses that require a lot of self-motivation and offer little if any face-to-face interaction.
霍蘭茨與其他人合作撰寫的MOOC評估報告認為，典型的社區學院學生往往沒有受惠于在線課程所需的讀寫能力和動力——學習這些課程需要大量的自我激勵，而且幾乎沒有面對面互動交流的機會。
But even if MOOCs have failed to deliver on their original promise to educate the poor, they have proved more effective with another slice of the population: Americans who may already have a higher education and a job, but who feel the need to acquire new skills to progress in their careers.
不過，即使MOOC未能兌現教育窮人的最初諾言，但事實證明，它們能更有效地幫助另一個群體：可能已經接受過高等教育且擁有一份工作，但覺得有必要學習新技能以推動職業生涯的美國人。
Udacity was the first to move in this direction, focusing on a more humble business model helping companies create MOOCs to train their workers and customers.
Udacity是第一家朝這個方向發展的在線教育公司。這家教育平臺致力于通過一種相對沒那么雄心勃勃的商業模式，幫助公司創建MOOC課程來培訓它們的員工和客戶。
Google, for instance, teamed with Udacity to create MOOCs for programmers who work on Google platforms. They have a course on game design in HTML 5, and another on Android.
比如，谷歌(Google)與Udacity合作創建了專門面向谷歌平臺程序員的MOOC課程。他們已經開設了一門HTML 5語言的游戲設計課程，另一項設計課程則是基于安卓系統(Android)。
“We want to fast-track the best practices at a large scale,” said Peter Lubbers, who is in charge of MOOC developer training for Google. “We want all the techniques we know about to get out to the market.”
“我們想大規模地快速推廣最佳實踐，”谷歌公司MOOC課程開發團隊負責人彼得·呂貝爾斯(Peter Lubbers)說。“我們希望傳授我們知道的所有符合市場需求的技術。”
Udacity helped Cloudera, a software company, make a MOOC to teach customers and potential customers how to use its systems to analyze big data.
Udacity幫助軟件公司Cloudera開發了一門旨在向客戶和潛在客戶傳授如何使用該公司系統分析大數據的MOOC課程。
The “NanoDegree” is a step in a similar direction: offering a narrow set of skills that can be clearly applied to a job, providing learners with a bite-size chunk of knowledge and an immediate motivation to acquire it.
“納米學位”是朝著類似方向邁出的一步：傳授一套范圍很窄，但可以明確應用到某項工作上的技能，為學習者提供一小塊易理解的知識，以及立即掌握這些知識的動機。
It may not offer all the advantages of a liberal arts education, but it could offer a plausible path to young men and women who may not have the time, money or skill to make it through a four-year or even a two-year degree.
它可能無法提供文理教育的所有優點，但它可以為那些或許沒有時間、金錢或技能來完成四年制或兩年制學位的年輕人提供一個可行的教育路徑。
AT&T will accept the NanoDegree as a credential for entry-level jobs (and is hoping to persuade other companies to accept it, too) and has reserved 100 internship slots for its graduates. Udacity is also creating NanoDegrees with other companies.
AT&T將認可“納米學位”是有能力從事入門級工作的憑證（并希望說服其他公司也接受它），該公司已經為這一學位的畢業生預留了100個實習崗位。此外，Udacity正在與其他公司合作創建各類“納米學位”。
If all goes according to plan, Mr. Thrun says, Udacity will ultimately create an alternative approach to the “four years and done” model of higher education, splitting it into chunks that students can take throughout their lives.
如果一切順利，特隆說，Udacity最終將為“四年制”高等教育模式創建一個替代方案，將其分割成學生能夠終生學習的“知識塊”。
“It’s a more focused education with less time wasted,” Mr. Thrun told me. “They can get a degree quickly, get a job and then maybe do it again.”
“它是一種側重點更加突出，耗費時間更少的教育方式，” 特隆告訴我。“學生們可以迅速獲得一項學位，找到一份工作，甚至有可能多次接受這種教育。”
This isn’t the kind of educational pathway that encourages much smelling of the roses. The live college experience is probably better at providing noncognitive skills.
它不是那種讓人對就業前景抱有玫瑰色憧憬的教育途徑。那種活生生的大學體驗或許能夠更好地傳授非認知類技能。
