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The End of the English Major

英語專業(yè)日暮途窮

Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened?

全美人文學(xué)科入學(xué)人數(shù)驟減。發(fā)生了什么？

The crisis, when it came, arrived so quickly that its scale was hard to recognize at first. From 2012 to the start of the pandemic, the number of English majors on campus at Arizona State University fell from nine hundred and fifty-three to five hundred and seventy-eight. Records indicate that the number of graduated language and literature majors decreased by roughly half, as did the number of history majors. Women’s studies lost eighty per cent. “It’s hard for students like me, who are pursuing an English major, to find joy in what they’re doing,” Meg Macias, a junior, said one afternoon as the edges of the sky over the campus went soft. It was late autumn, and the sunsets came in like flame on thin paper on the way to dusk. “They always know there’s someone who wishes that they were doing something else.”

這場危機(jī)來得如此迅猛，以至于很多人一開始都沒有意識到其規(guī)模之大。從2012年到疫情爆發(fā)之初，亞利桑那州立大學(xué)（A.S.U.）在校英專生數(shù)量已從953人下降至578人。根據(jù)記錄，無論是語言和文學(xué)專業(yè)畢業(yè)生，還是歷史專業(yè)畢業(yè)生，其數(shù)量都已“腰斬”。女性研究專業(yè)畢業(yè)生甚至驟減八成。大三學(xué)生梅格·馬西亞斯（Meg Macias）說道：“對于像我這樣的英專生來說，看到這樣糟糕的招生情況簡直糟心透了。永遠(yuǎn)都有人悔不當(dāng)初，心想要是沒選這個(gè)專業(yè)就好了。”她說話時(shí)正值晚秋，日暮將至，校園的天際線正逐漸隱去，殘陽宛如薄紙上跳躍的火焰。

A.S.U., which is centered in Tempe and has more than eighty thousand students on campus, is today regarded as a beacon for the democratic promises of public higher education. Its undergraduate admission rate is eighty-eight per cent. Nearly half its undergraduates are from minority backgrounds, and a third are the first in their families to go to college. The in-state tuition averages just four thousand dollars, yet A.S.U. has a better faculty-to-student ratio on site than U.C. Berkeley and spends more on faculty research than Princeton. For students interested in English literature, it can seem a lucky place to land. The university’s tenure-track English faculty is seventy-one strong—including eleven Shakespeare scholars, most of them of color. In 2021, A.S.U. English professors won two Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other English department in America did.

位于坦佩的亞利桑那州立大學(xué)擁有八千多名學(xué)生，如今被視為普及公立高等教育的標(biāo)志。其本科生錄取率為88%，本科生中近半數(shù)有少數(shù)族裔背景，三分之一是家中第一代大學(xué)生。亞利桑那州內(nèi)學(xué)費(fèi)平均只有4000美元，然而和加州大學(xué)伯克利分校相比，其師生數(shù)比例更高；和普林斯頓大學(xué)相比，其學(xué)術(shù)研究投入更多。因此，對那些對英語文學(xué)感興趣的學(xué)生來說，亞利桑那州立大學(xué)似是再理想不過的福地。該校有71位位于終生教職軌道的英語學(xué)科教師，包括11位莎士比亞學(xué)者，大多為有色人種。2021年，該校的英語教授斬獲兩項(xiàng)普利策獎(jiǎng)，在美國所有英語系里都首屈一指。

On campus, I met many students who might have been moved by these virtues but felt pulled toward other pursuits. Luiza Monti, a senior, had come to college as a well-rounded graduate of a charter school in Phoenix. She had fallen in love with Italy during a summer exchange and fantasized about Italian language and literature, but was studying business—specifically, an interdisciplinary major called Business (Language and Culture), which incorporated Italian coursework. “It’s a safeguard thing,” Monti, who wore earrings from a jewelry business founded by her mother, a Brazilian immigrant, told me. “There’s an emphasis on who is going to hire you.”

在亞利桑那州立大學(xué)里，我遇到許多學(xué)生，他們雖被該校的這些優(yōu)勢所打動，但卻最終屈從于其他人生選擇的誘惑。路易斯·蒙蒂（Luiza Monti）當(dāng)時(shí)是一名大四學(xué)生，她多才多藝，高中就讀于鳳凰城一所契約學(xué)校。在一次暑期交換生項(xiàng)目中，她愛上了意大利，并對意大利語言文學(xué)充滿憧憬，然而她選擇了主修商科，更確切地說，這個(gè)專業(yè)名為商務(wù)（語言和文化），是一個(gè)融合了意大利語課程的跨學(xué)科專業(yè)。蒙蒂戴著母親（一位巴西移民）所創(chuàng)辦的珠寶商店的耳環(huán)，對我說：“這是一種保障，重要的是誰會雇傭你。”

注釋：

charter school: (in North America) a public funded independent school established by teachers, parents, or community groups under the terms of a charter with a local or national authority （北美）契約學(xué)校（根據(jù)地方或國家當(dāng)局特許狀由教師、家長或社區(qū)組織建立的公助私立學(xué)校）——《新牛津英漢雙解大詞典》

Justin Kovach, another senior, loved to write and always had. He’d blown through the thousand-odd pages of “Don Quixote” on his own (“I thought, This is a really funny story”) and looked for more big books to keep the feeling going. “I like the long, hard classics with the fancy language,” he said. Still, he wasn’t majoring in English, or any kind of literature. In college—he had started at the University of Pittsburgh—he’d moved among computer science, mathematics, and astrophysics, none of which brought him any sense of fulfillment. “Most of the time I would spend avoiding doing work,” he confessed. But he never doubted that a field in STEM—a common acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—was the best path for him. He settled on a degree in data science.

另一位當(dāng)時(shí)的大四學(xué)生賈斯汀·科瓦奇（Justin Kovach）一直以來都熱愛寫作。他自己讀完了一千多頁的《堂吉訶德》（“我覺得，這真是一個(gè)有趣的故事”），并尋找更多的鴻篇巨作來保持這種興趣。他說：“我喜歡那些語言華麗、頗費(fèi)思量的長篇經(jīng)典作品。”盡管如此，他并沒有主修英語或任何文學(xué)專業(yè)。他此前曾在匹茲堡大學(xué)上學(xué)，大學(xué)生涯都在計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)、數(shù)學(xué)和天體物理學(xué)之間游走，然而這些學(xué)科的學(xué)習(xí)沒有給他帶來任何成就感。他承認(rèn)：“大部分時(shí)間我都在逃避功課。”但他從未懷疑過科學(xué)、技術(shù)、工程和數(shù)學(xué)領(lǐng)域（STEM）是他的最佳求學(xué)選擇。他最終選定了數(shù)據(jù)科學(xué)這個(gè)專業(yè)。

Kovach will graduate with some thirty thousand dollars in debt, a burden that influenced his choice of a degree. For decades now, the cost of education has increased over all ahead of inflation. One theory has been that this pressure, plus the growing precariousness of the middle class, has played a role in driving students like him toward hard-skill majors. (English majors, on average, carry less debt than students in other fields, but they take longer to pay it down.)

到畢業(yè)時(shí)，科瓦奇將背負(fù)三萬美元的貸款，這一經(jīng)濟(jì)負(fù)擔(dān)影響了他的專業(yè)選擇。數(shù)十年來，教育成本普遍上漲，增速甚于通貨膨脹。有理論認(rèn)為，學(xué)費(fèi)壓力大，加上中產(chǎn)階級搖搖欲墜，促使像科瓦奇這樣的學(xué)生選擇硬技能學(xué)科。（英語專業(yè)學(xué)生背負(fù)的助學(xué)貸款通常低于其他學(xué)科的學(xué)生，但他們需要更長的時(shí)間來償還債務(wù)。）

注：

1.美國大學(xué)生多數(shù)背負(fù)助學(xué)貸款，見 搜狐-美國多數(shù)大學(xué)生背債務(wù)畢業(yè) 平均需還3.3萬美元

2.precariousness: the condition of being likely to fail or get worse. Cambridge Dictionary

For the decline at A.S.U. is not anomalous. According to Robert Townsend, the co-director of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators project, which collects data uniformly but not always identically to internal enrollment figures, from 2012 to 2020 the number of graduated humanities majors at Ohio State’s main campus fell by forty-six per cent. Tufts lost nearly fifty per cent of its humanities majors, and Boston University lost forty-two. Notre Dame ended up with half as many as it started with, while SUNY Albany lost almost three-quarters. Vassar and Bates—standard-bearing liberal-arts colleges—saw their numbers of humanities majors fall by nearly half. In 2018, the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point briefly considered eliminating thirteen majors, including English, history, and philosophy, for want of pupils.

亞利桑那州立大學(xué)文科生減少的情況并非孤例。美國藝術(shù)與科學(xué)院（American Academy of Arts and Sciences）人文指標(biāo)項(xiàng)目所收集的數(shù)據(jù)，雖偶與內(nèi)部招生數(shù)字略有出入，但大體非常一致。項(xiàng)目的聯(lián)合主任羅伯特·湯森德（Robert Townsend）表示，從2012年到2020年俄亥俄州立大學(xué)（The Ohio State University）主校區(qū)的人文學(xué)科畢業(yè)生人數(shù)下降了46%。塔夫茨大學(xué)（Tufts University）少了近一半的文科生；波士頓大學(xué)（Boston University）減少了42%；圣母學(xué)院（Notre Dame College）降到2012年學(xué)生數(shù)量的一半水平；紐約州立大學(xué)奧爾巴尼分校（University at Albany, State University of New York）少了將近四分之三；瓦薩學(xué)院（Vassar College）和貝茨學(xué)院（Bates College）這兩所頂級文理學(xué)院人文學(xué)科學(xué)生人數(shù)則近乎腰斬。威斯康星大學(xué)史蒂文分校（University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point）在2018年曾一度考慮取消包括英語、歷史、哲學(xué)在內(nèi)的13個(gè)專業(yè)，原因是生源不足。

During the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third. Humanities enrollment in the United States has declined over all by seventeen per cent, Townsend found. What’s going on? The trend mirrors a global one; four-fifths of countries in the Organization for Economic Co?peration reported falling humanities enrollments in the past decade. But that brings little comfort to American scholars, who have begun to wonder what it might mean to graduate a college generation with less education in the human past than any that has come before.

過去十年間，在英語和歷史領(lǐng)域的研究規(guī)模減少了整整三分之一。湯森德還發(fā)現(xiàn)，美國人文學(xué)科的入學(xué)規(guī)?？傮w上下降了17%。到底是怎么回事？這一趨勢其實(shí)具有全球性——80%的經(jīng)濟(jì)合作與發(fā)展組織（The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development）國家的文科專業(yè)入學(xué)率在過去十年都在下降。但這并不能給美國學(xué)者帶來什么安慰，他們已經(jīng)開始思考，這一代大學(xué)生人文教育的空前不足可能意味著什么。

翻譯組：

Eva，尋路中，偶爾懷念，時(shí)常向前

Mai，男，經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)博士，世界那么大，我想活得久一點(diǎn)

Rex，男，集書狂魔，經(jīng)學(xué)鋼粉，總覺得24小時(shí)不夠用