哈佛女校长的讲演（转贴）

qlpy

A report issued by the U.S. Department of Education last year warned of the “obsolescence” of higher education

as we know it and called for federal intervention in service of the national interest.

Yet universities like Harvard and its peers, those represented by so many of you here today, are beloved by alumni

who donate billions of dollars each year, are sought after by students who struggle to win admission, and, in fact, are deeply revered by the American public.

美国联邦教育部（the U.S. Department of Education），成立于1867年，至今有130年的历史。当时的教育办公室很小，除局长（Commissioner）外，只有3个工作人员，经费有限，每年约13000美元。

2000/2001年度，全国教育总经费为6500亿美元（约占美国GDP的7.3%），其中 91% 以上来自州、地方及私人捐赠，联邦政府拨款仅占9%，大约600亿美元。联邦政府的教育经费分由教育部、卫生部以及农业部掌握，其中教育部所掌握经费约为420亿美元，仅为教育总经费的6%。
美国联邦教育部主要任务（Mission）有以下七个方面：
　　（1）保证联邦政府人人得到平等接受教育机会的承诺得以实现；
　　（2）在各州、地方学校系统以及公私立非盈利教育机构、以社区为基础的组织、家长及学生办学或参与教育的努力的基础上，采取补充措施，使教育质量不断得到提高；
　　（3）鼓励公众、家长和学生积极参与联邦政府实施的教育计划；
　　（4）通过联邦政府支持的教育科研、评估和信息发布来促进教育质量和效益的提高；
　　（5）加强对联邦教育项目的协调；
　　（6）加强对联邦教育事务的管理；
　　（7）对总统、国会及公众负责，不断提高联邦教育项目执行效果。

教育部具体有以下六个方面的职责（Responsibilities）：
　　（1）对美国教育中出现的重大问题提供指导和合作。
　　（2）作为国家教育思想和信息的交流机构，收集并传播优秀的教育思想和最新教育研究成果。
　　（3）给有需要的家庭提供奖学金和贷款，使他们的子女能接受高等教育。
　　（4）帮助地方社区及学校解决学生面临的最紧迫的问题。如增强学生的达标能力，改善学校治安，鼓励家庭参与，提高教师素质，帮助各州及学区满足学校和学生的其它特殊需要，等等。
　　（5）根据经济形势的变化，帮助学生做好就业准备。
　　（6）保证所有公民都有平等享受联邦教育基金资助的权利，不受种族、肤色、国籍、性别、残疾或年龄的影响。

qlpy

In a recent survey, 93 percent of respondents considered our universities “one of [the country’s] most valuable resources.”

Abroad, our universities are admired and emulated; they are arguably the American institution most respected by the rest of the world.

How do we explain these contradictions? Is American higher education in crisis, and if so, what kind? What should we as its leaders and representatives be doing about it?

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This ambivalence, this curious love-hate relationship 这种矛盾心态，这种奇怪的爱恨关系, derives in no small part from our almost unbounded expectations of our colleges and universities, expectations that are at once intensely felt and poorly understood.

From the time of its founding, the United States has tied its national identity to the power of education.

We have long turned to education to prepare our citizens for the political equality fundamental to our national self-definition.

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In 1779, for example, Thomas Jefferson called for a national aristocracy of talent,

chosen “without regard to wealth, birth, or other accidental condition of circumstance”

and “rendered by liberal education ... able to guard the sacred deposit of rights and liberties of their fellow-citizens.”

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As our economy has become more complex, more tied to specialized knowledge, education has become more crucial to social and economic mobility.

W.E.B. DuBois observed in 1903 that “Education and work are the levers to lift up a people.”

Education makes the promise of America possible.

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In the past half century, American colleges and universities have shared in a revolution, serving as both the emblem and the engine of the expansion of citizenship, equality and opportunity –

to blacks, women, Jews, immigrants, and others who would have been subjected to quotas or excluded altogether in an earlier era.

My presence here today – and indeed that of many others on this platform – would have been unimaginable even a few short years ago.

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Those who charge that universities are unable to change should take note of this transformation, of how different we are from universities even of the mid 20th century.

And those who long for a lost golden age of higher education should think about the very limited population that alleged utopia actually served.

College used to be restricted to a tiny elite; now it serves the many, not just the few.

The proportion of the college age population 大学适龄人口的比例 enrolled in higher education today is four times what it was in 1950; twelve times what it was before the 1920s.

Ours is a different and a far better world.

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At institutions like Harvard and its peers, this revolution has been built on the notion that access should be based, as Jefferson urged, on talent, not circumstance.

In the late 1960s, Harvard began sustained efforts to identify and attract outstanding minority students;

in the 1970s, it gradually removed quotas limiting women to a quarter of the entering college class.

Recently, Harvard has worked hard to send the message that the college welcomes families from across the economic spectrum.

As a result we have seen in the past 3 years a 33 percent increase in students from families with incomes under $60,000.

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Harvard’s dorms and Houses are the most diverse environments in which many of our students will ever live.

Yet issues of access and cost persist – for middle - class families who suffer terrifying sticker shock, and for graduate and professional students, who may incur enormous debt 承担巨大的债务 as they pursue service careers in fields where salaries are modest.

As graduate training comes to seem almost as indispensable as the baccalaureate degree for mobility and success, the cost of these programs takes on even greater importance.

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The desirability and the perceived necessity of higher education have intensified the fears of many.

Will I get in? Will I be able to pay? This anxiety expresses itself in both deep-seated resentment and nearly unrealizable expectations.

Higher education cannot alone guarantee the mobility and equality at the heart of the American Dream.

But we must fully embrace our obligation to be available and affordable.

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We must make sure that talented students are able to come to Harvard, that they know they are able to come, and that they know we want them here.

We need to make sure that cost does not divert students from pursuing their passions and their dreams.

But American anxiety about higher education is about more than just cost.

The deeper problem is a widespread lack of understanding and agreement about what universities ought to do and be.

Universities are curious institutions with varied purposes that they have neither clearly articulated nor adequately justified.

Resulting public confusion, at a time when higher education has come to seem an indispensable social resource, has produced a torrent of demands for greater “accountability” from colleges and universities.

qlpy

Universities are indeed accountable. But we in higher education need to seize the initiative in defining what we are accountable for.
大学的确是要承担责任的。但我们从事高等教育的人需要首先搞清楚，我们为了什么去承担责任。

We are asked to report graduation rates, graduate school admission statistics, scores on standardized tests intended to assess the “value added” of years in college, research dollars, numbers of faculty publications.
人们要求我们报告毕业率、研究生院的入学统计数字、标准考试的分数，目的是为了在大学评价中提高“附加值”，人们要看研究经费有多少，教师出版和发表论著的数量是多少。

But such measures cannot themselves capture the achievements, let alone the aspirations of universities.
但这些硬性指标本身并不能说明所取得的成就，更不要提大学所渴望达到的目标了。

Many of these metrics are important to know, and they shed light on particular parts of our undertaking.
虽然了解上述指标很重要，它们也可以说明我们事业中一些特别的部分内容。

But our purposes are far more ambitious and our accountability thus far more difficult to explain.
但我们的目的要比这些宏大得多，因此，要解释我们的责任感，也更加困难。

qlpy

Let me venture a definition. The essence of a university is that it is uniquely accountable to the past and to the future – not simply or even primarily to the present. A university is not about results in the next quarter; it is not even about who a student has become by graduation.
那么，让我斗胆提出一个定义来吧。一所大学的精神所在，是它要特别对历史和未来负责----而不单单或着仅仅是对现在负责。

It is about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future.
一所大学关乎学问，影响终生的学问，将传统传承千年的学问，创造未来的学问。

A university looks both backwards and forwards in ways that must – that even ought to – conflict with a public’s immediate concerns or demands.
一所大学，既要回头看，也要向前看，其看的方法必须----也应该--- -与大众当下所关心的或是所要求的相对立。

Universities make commitments to the timeless, and these investments have yields we cannot predict and often cannot measure.
大学是要对永恒做出承诺，而这些投资会产生我们无法预测且常常是无法衡量的收益。

qlpy

Universities are stewards of living tradition – in Widener and Houghton and our 88 other libraries, in the Fogg and the Peabody, in our departments of classics, of history and of literature.
大学是那些活生生的传统的管理员----在Widener图书馆与Houghton图书馆以及我们另外的88个图书馆，在Fogg与Peabody博物馆，在我们的古典学科的系科，在历史与文学的系科，都有活生生的传统。

We are uncomfortable with efforts to justify these endeavors by defining them as instrumental, as measurably useful to particular contemporary needs.
对于那些努力去证明这些传统不过是工具性的、不过是对某些当代需求有一定用处而已的说法和作法，我们会感觉很不舒服。

Instead we pursue them in part “for their own sake,” because they define what has over centuries made us human,
恰恰相反，我们追寻传统，从某种程度上讲，是“为了它们自身”，因为正是它们，千百年来界定了我们何以为人类，

not because they can enhance our global competitiveness.
而不是因为它们可以提升我们在全球的竞争力。

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We pursue them because they offer us as individuals and as societies a depth and breadth of vision we cannot find in the inevitably myopic present.
我们追寻它们，因为它们使我们的----无论是个人的还是社会的----洞察力增加了深度和广度，而这，则是我们在难以避免短视的当下所无法发现的。

We pursue them too because just as we need food and shelter to survive, just as we need jobs and seek education to better our lot, so too we as human beings search for meaning.
我们同样追寻它们，也因为正如我们需要食物和房屋生存一样，正如我们需要工作和寻求教育来改善我们的运气一样，我们作为人类同样需要寻找意义。

We strive to understand who we are, where we came from, where we are going and why. For many people, the four years of undergraduate life offer the only interlude permitted for unfettered exploration of such fundamental questions.
我们努力去理解我们是谁，从哪里来，到哪里去，原因何在。对许多人来说，四年的大学生活不过是允许自己去自由自在地探索这类根本问题的一个插曲而已。