大學學什麼才能不被計算機淘汰

Computers and robots are already replacing many workers. What can young people learn now that won’t be superseded within their lifetimes by these devices and that will secure them good jobs and solid income over the next 20, 30 or 50 years? In the universities, we are struggling to answer that question.

計算機和機器人已經在取代許多人類職工。年輕人如今學些什麼纔不會在有生之年被這些設備所替代，確保自己在未來20年、30年乃至50年都有不錯的工作和穩定的收入？在大學裏，我們都在苦苦思索這個問題的答案。

Most people complete the majority of their formal education by their early 20s and expect to draw on it for the better part of a century. But a computer can learn in seconds most of the factual information that people get in high school and college, and there will be a great many generations of new computers and robots, improving at an exponential rate, before one long human lifetime has passed.

多數人在20歲出頭的年齡就會完成大部分的正規教育，並指望在未來50多年裏依靠它來謀生。然而，計算機可以在幾秒鐘內學會人們在高中和大學獲得的全部事實信息。在一個人漫長的生命結束之前，還將涌現出一代代新的計算機和機器人，而且它們會以指數增長的速度進步。

Two strains of thought seem to dominate the effort to deal with this problem. The first is that we teachers should define and provide to our students a certain kind of general, flexible, insight-bearing human learning that, we hope, cannot be replaced by computers. The second is that we need to make education more business-oriented, teaching about the real world and enabling a creative entrepreneurial process that, presumably, computers cannot duplicate. These two ideas are not necessarily in conflict.

應對這一問題的努力似乎由兩種思路主導。第一種思路是，我們教師必須定義一種廣泛、靈活、有洞見的人類學習體驗，並把它提供給我們的學生，同時希望它不會被計算機取代。第二種思路是，我們需要讓教育更加以商業爲導向，讓學生認識真實的世界，實現一種計算機大概無法複製的創新的創業過程。這兩種想法並不一定矛盾。

Some scholars are trying to discern what kinds of learning have survived technological replacement better than others. Richard J. Murnane and Frank Levy in their book “The New Division of Labor” (Princeton, 2004) studied occupations that expanded during the information revolution of the recent past. They included jobs like service manager at an auto dealership, as opposed to jobs that have declined, like telephone operator.

一些學者正在試圖弄清哪些類型的學習被技術進步取代的程度更小。理查德·J·莫尼恩(Richard J Murnane)和弗蘭克·利維(Frank Levy)在他們合寫的《新的分工》（The New Division of Labor，由普林斯頓大學出版社於2004年出版）一書中，研究了近期歷史上在信息革命中出現擴張的職業。這其中包括汽車經銷商的服務經理。相比之下，另外一些工作崗位則在減少，比如接線員。

The successful occupations, by this measure, shared certain characteristics: People who practiced them needed complex communication skills and expert knowledge. Such skills included an ability to convey “not just information but a particular interpretation of information.” They said that expert knowledge was broad, deep and practical, allowing the solution of “uncharted problems.”

這種標準下的成功職業有一些共同特點：從業者需要複雜的溝通技巧和專業學識。此類技能傳遞的“不光是信息，還有對信息的特定解讀。”兩人認爲，專業知識要廣泛、深入、實用，能夠解決“未知的問題”。

These attributes may not be as beneficial in the future. But the study certainly suggests that a college education needs to be broad and general, and not defined primarily by the traditional structure of separate departments staffed by professors who want, most of all, to be at the forefront of their own narrow disciplines. But this old departmental structure is still fundamental at universities, and it is hard to change.

這些特點未來或許不會帶來同樣的優勢。不過，這項研究無疑告訴我們，大學教育需要廣博和寬泛，不應該主要由院系的傳統結構來框定。這些院系各行其是，裏面的教授多數想要成爲各自狹窄學科的翹楚。但這種舊的院系結構仍然在大學根深蒂固，很難改變。

Consider the controversy at Harvard College over the Program in General Education, whose antecedents date to 1946. The program requires Harvard undergraduates to take courses devised to prepare them for a broad range of issues in life after college. But critics have said that the program is not succeeding, and that many professors who participate in it teach only their own department’s scholarly material, without attention to wider aims.

來看看哈佛大學對通識教育的爭議吧。這個項目的前身可以追溯到1946年。它要求哈佛的本科生學習一些量身打造的課程，從而爲畢業後人生中碰到的各種問題做好準備。然而，持批評態度的人認爲，該項目並不成功，許多參與其中的老師僅教授自己院系的學術內容，忽視了這些更大的目標。

Prof. Louis Menand of Harvard, in a May 5 statement, argued that an education focused on narrow academic disciplines was inadequate: “Less than 20 percent of our students go on to get Ph.D.s,” he said. Many students end up in the business world, broadly construed, not in academia.

哈佛大學教授路易·梅南(Louis Menand)在5月5號發表的一篇文章中宣稱，專注於狹隘學術領域的教育是不夠的：“我們的學生中只有不到20%會去讀博士，”他說。許多學生最終進入廣義上的商業領域，而不是學術界。

In a separate May 5 statement, Prof. Sean D. Kelly, chairman of the General Education Review Committee, said a Harvard education should give students “an art of living in the world.”

在同樣於5月5日發表的另一篇文章中，通識教育評審委員會(General Education Review Committee)主席、肖恩·D·凱利(Sean D Kelly)教授提出，哈佛的教育應該傳授給學生“當下世界的生存之道”。

But how should professors do this? Perhaps we should prepare students for entrepreneurial opportunities suggested by our own disciplines. Even departments entirely divorced from business could do this by suggesting enterprises, nonprofits and activities in which students can later use their specialized knowledge.

不過，教授們應該怎樣做到這一點？也許我們應該讓學生爲我們自身學科的創業機會做好準備。即使有些院系完全與商業無關，也可以做到這一點，方法就是推薦一些合適的企業、非營利組織及活動，讓學生未來可以在這些地方利用自己的專業知識。

Many of these issues have arisen in my own academic life. My teaching has changed over the decades. I try to make it more useful in confronting issues of creativity and morality in the work world.

在我本人的學術生涯中，遇到過這裏的許多問題。我的教學在幾十年裏不斷變化。我希望自己的課程能更加有助於學生應對職場上有關創造力和道德原則的各種問題。

When I arrived at Yale in 1982, there were no undergraduate courses in finance. I started one in the fall of 1985, and it continues today. Increasingly, I’ve tried to connect mathematical theory to actual applications in finance.

當我1982年來到耶魯的時候，這裏並沒有金融學方面的本科課程。我在1985年創辦了一個，並讓它延續至今。隨着時間的推移，我越來越多地嘗試將數學理論融合到金融的實際應用領域。

Since its beginnings, the course has gradually become more robotic: It resembles a real, dynamic, teaching experience, but in execution, much of it is prerecorded, and exercises and examinations are computerized. Students can take it without need of my physical presence. Yale made my course available to the broader public on free online sites: AllLearn in 2002, Open Yale in 2008 and 2011, and now on Coursera.

開設之後，這門課逐漸變得越來越自動化：它與動態的真實教學體驗一樣，但在執行層面上，許多部分是預先錄製的，而課堂練習和考試則在電腦上進行。無需我本人親自到場，學生就能學習這門課。耶魯還通過免費的網站把我的課開放給大衆：2002年放到了AllLearn上，2008年和2011年放到了Open Yale上，目前則在Coursera上。

The process of tweaking and improving the course to fit better in a digital framework has given me time to reflect about what I am doing for my students. I could just retire now and let them watch my lectures and use the rest of the digitized material. But I find myself thinking that I should be doing something more for them.

爲了更好地適應電子教學而對這門課程進行調整與改進的過程，給了我時間來反思自己爲學生做了些什麼。我可以現在就退休，讓他們觀看我的講課錄像，使用其他的數字資料。但我忍不住想，自己應該爲他們再多做些事情。

So I continue to update the course, thinking about how I can integrate its lessons into an “art of living in the world.” I have tried to enhance my students’ sense that finance should be the art of financing important human activities, of getting people (and robots someday) working together to accomplish things that we really want done.

因此我在不斷地更新這門課程，思考怎樣才能將其中的教學內容融入“當下世界的生存之道”當中。我努力強化學生的概念，讓他們認識到金融應當是爲重要的人類活動融資的藝術，是讓人們（將來還有機器人）攜手完成我們願望的藝術。

Like Harvard and other colleges and universities, Yale has been struggling with the broad issues for a very long time. It once experimented with an undergraduate business program, to prepare students for life beyond college, but shut down that program in 1954. In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, antipathy to the business establishment increased. According to the former Yale Graduate School dean John Perry Miller, in his book “Creating Academic Settings” (J. Simeon Press, 1991), there was open “hostility” to the idea of business-oriented education at Yale.

與哈佛等院校一樣，耶魯在這個大問題上掙扎了很長一段時間。它曾經嘗試開設本科生的商學專業，希望讓學生爲畢業之後的人生做好準備，但1954年的時候停止了嘗試。上世紀60年代的越戰期間，人們對商業權貴階層的厭惡之情有所加劇。曾任耶魯大學研究生院院長的約翰·佩裏·米勒(John Perry Miller)在他的著作《創造學術環境》（Creating Academic Settings，由J·西蒙出版社[J. Simeon Press]於1991年推出）中指出，當時的耶魯存在對以商學爲導向的教育理念的公開“敵意”。

Nonetheless, Yale produced many fine businesspeople. But because of this hostility, Yale did not start a business school until 1976, and even then denied that it was just a business school: Instead of offering a Master of Business Administration, it initially conferred only the more idealistic-sounding Master of Public and Private Management. Before 1976, the university had a great economics department, imbued with a lofty sense of pure theory and mathematics, but it was not focused on practical business education.

儘管如此，耶魯培養出了許多出色的商人。然而，由於這樣的敵意，耶魯直到1976年纔開設了商學院，而且就算到了那個時候也否認它是一所純粹的商學院：開始的時候，它並未開設工商管理碩士課程，而是僅授予聽起來更具理想主義氣息的公共與私人管理碩士學位。1976年之前，耶魯已經擁有了一個不錯的經濟學系。它沉浸在高遠的純理論與數學的氛圍之中，但並未關注務實的商學教育。

The developing redefinition of higher education should provide benefits that will continue for decades into the future. We will have to adapt as information technology advances. At the same time, we must continually re-evaluate what is inherently different between human and computer learning, and what is practical and useful to students for the long haul. And we will have to face the reality that the “art of living in the world” requires at least some elements of a business education.

對高等教育的定義正在進行的調整，應當提供能惠及未來數十載的益處。我們不得不適應信息技術的進步。與此同時，我們必須不斷評估，人類與計算機學習之間的本質區別究竟在哪裏，而對學生而言，長期看來什麼纔是最實際和有用的。我們也不得不面對一個現實：“當下世界的生存之道”至少需要商學教育的一些元素。