大學四年，40門課程，120學分，換來一紙學歷。這除了說明你有足夠的自制力能夠在座位上坐這么長時間之外，還能給你未來的雇主提供其他有價值的信息嗎？先驅教育者提出改革，將知識與實用技能，學士與碩士學位有機結合，讓學生真正學有所成，讓學位不再是一紙空憑。這到底是一次顛覆性改革還是又一次徒勞嘗試？我們拭目以待。

By Jeffrey J. Selingo

凡路 選注

Confronting the fact that the old ways of educating undergraduates are looking increasingly irrelevant, schools are adopting time-saving and flexible innovations.

Across from Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown University is a red clapboard house where this 226-year-old Jesuit university is trying to reinvent itself.

Georgetown has long enjoyed a top twenty-five spot in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and a stellar reputation among prospective students, who often choose between it and the top Ivy League universities. But Georgetown's endowment of around $1.4 billion pales in comparison to that of the University of Pennsylvania ($10 billion), Princeton ($9 billion), or Stanford ($22 billion). Without that kind of financial cushion, Georgetown's biggest boosters worry it may not continue to attract top students in the future, especially with an annual price tag of more than $60,000.

The "red house," as it is known around campus, opened in 2014 as an incubator to rethink the university's future. The cramped house is filled with posters dotted with sticky notes and elaborate drawings of models showing how students move through their undergraduate years. The chief architect of what happens in the house is Randy Bass, the vice provost of education and a popular figure on campus who still teaches undergraduates. Bass, who has a salt-and-pepper beard and a dry sense of humor, has focused much of his work in the last year on finding an avenue to increase the value of a Georgetown degree.

Bass told me higher education suffers from a measurement problem. "We only charge for a portion of what students see as the value of moving to a degree," he said. Tuition is tied to the credit hour, and 120 earns a bachelor's degree. But the credit hour doesn't actually measure how much students learn. It's simply an arbitrary measure of time spent in a seat, and it certainly doesn't tell employers much about the college graduates they're hiring except that they had the discipline to make it through four years of courses.

What's more, a degree based on time spent in a seat is inefficient because it forces all students to follow a single route to graduation (which, as we've seen, is not how the workplace operates). A new degree taking shape at Georgetown aims to strike out those inefficiencies and, at the same time, marry two competing interests: job skills and education. It would combine a liberal arts bachelor's degree with a vocational master's degree, all within the time frame of four years. Several universities already offer combined degrees, of course, but they typically take five years, and the master's experience is usually bolted on at the very end, almost as an afterthought.

Instead, Georgetown is rethinking the entire track to the degree. Professors have identified the competencies students need to learn for the merged undergraduate and graduate degrees. At most colleges, such competencies are tied to a course. Sit in a fifteen-week class and you've achieved the goal. By identifying the competencies associated with a degree, Georgetown can move away from the course as the sole measure of learning. Students could earn a competency in a fraction of a course or, more important, outside the walls of the university in internships or projects.

"That stuff that has been on the margins of the experience now are the bread and butter of this new degree," Bass said. "They are at the center of what we do."

The combined degree probably won't be less expensive than the four-year degree is now, but Bass believes it will be packed with more value. About one-third of Georgetown seniors already go part-time in their last semester because they have completed their degree requirements. In the future, perhaps they can get a master's degree during the downtime until graduation. Traditionalists keep asking Bass where in his model the bachelor's degree ends and the master's begins. But he envisions it as one integrated experience, where the undergraduate studies shrink over four years as the work associated with the master's grows. "Just maybe," Bass said, "we are creating a new kind of degree."

Such a degree is designed for the kind of student that Georgetown typically attracts - top of their class, academically focused, the type that usually sprints into a job after college. But college students are no longer the homogeneous group they were three or four decades ago. Yet they are still largely served by a one-size-fits-all delivery method - 40 courses equals a bachelor's degree. Now, when technology allows much of the content of those classes to be delivered outside specified time periods each week and even anywhere in the world, the idea of "the course" seems antiquated and increasingly irrelevant to growing segments of today's students.

Vocabulary

1. obsolete: 廢棄的，淘汰的。

2. Georgetown University: 喬治城大學，創建于1789年，是一所綜合性私立大學，美國最古老的大學之一；clapboard: （覆蓋建筑物外墻的）護墻板；Jesuit: 耶穌會會士；reinvent: 徹底改造。

3. 一直以來，喬治城大學在《美國新聞與世界報道》的大學排名中都占據前25的地位，而且在學生當中一直享有星級版聲譽，這些天之驕子們往往在喬治城大學和頂尖常春藤學校之間做出抉擇。U.S. News & World Report: 《美國新聞與世界報道》，是美國綜合性報道和評論的英文周刊，自1983年以來，該刊開始對美國大學及其院系進行排名，該排名具有較高的權威性；stellar: 杰出的，優秀的；prospective: 可能的，有希望的；Ivy League: 常春藤盟校，指的是由美國東北部地區的八所大學組成的體育賽事聯盟，其成員全部是美國一流名校。

4. endowment: 捐款，資助；pale: v. 使相形見絀；University of Pennsylvania: 賓夕法尼亞大學，是一所全球頂尖的私立研究型大學，常春藤名校之一；Princeton: 普林斯頓大學，是世界著名的私立研究型大學，常春藤名校之一；Stanford: 斯坦福大學，是世界著名私立研究型大學。

5. cushion: 起緩解作用的東西；（尤指）防備不時之需的積蓄；booster: 擁護者，熱心支持者；price tag: 價格，費用。

6. incubator: 孵化器，恒溫箱。

7. 這個狹小的房間中貼滿了點綴著便簽紙的海報和精心繪制的模型，展示了學生該如何度過大學。cramped: 擁擠的，狹小的；sticky note: 便簽紙；elaborate: 詳盡的，精心制作的；undergraduate: 大學生的，本科的。

8. architect: 設計師，締造者；provost: （美國大學的）教務長。

9. salt-and-pepper: 斑白的；dry sense of humor: 冷幽默；avenue: 途徑，渠道。

10. 學費與學時掛鉤，修夠120學分才能拿到學士學位。credit hour: 學時。

11. 這只是任意一個衡量他們坐在座位上時間的標準，當然，除了證明他們有足夠的自制力學完了大學四年的課程之外，并不能夠讓雇傭者對他們所聘用的畢業生了解更多。arbitrary: 任意的；discipline: 自控能力，自制力。

12. take shape: 形成，成型；strike out: 狠打，出擊；marry: 使結合在一起。

13. liberal arts bachelor's degree : 文科學士學位；vocational master's degree: 職業碩士學位；time frame: 時間框架，時間范圍。

14. bolt on: 連接在……上；afterthought: 后添加的東西。

15. competence: 能力，技能；merged: 合并的。

16. sole: 唯一的，僅有的。

17. fraction: 小部分，少量。

18. margin: 邊緣；bread and butter: 生計，生活必需品。

19. pack with: 塞滿。

20. downtime: 休閑時間。

21. 他設想這兩個階段是融合在一起的，四年本科學業縮減的地方便是碩士工作開始的時候。envision: 展望，設想；shrink: 收縮，縮減。

22. sprint: 沖刺。

23. homogeneous: 同種類的，均一的。

24. antiquated: 陳舊的，過時的；segment: 部分。

（來源：英語學習雜志 編輯：董靜）