好英语网大学必须在秋季重新开学
Across the country, college campuses have become ghost towns. Students and professors are hunkered down inside, teaching and learning online. University administrators are tabulating the financial costs of the Covid-19 pandemic, which already exceed the CARES Act’s support for higher education.
在全国各地，大学校园已成为鬼城。学生和教授都呆在家，进行网络教学。大学行政人员正在计算新冠疫情的财务成本——这已经超过了《新冠病毒援助、救济和经济安全法案》(CARES Act)对高等教育的支持。
The toll of this pandemic is high and will continue to rise. But another crisis looms for students, higher education and the economy if colleges and universities cannot reopen their campuses in the fall.
疫情造成的经济损失很大，而且还将持续攀升。但是，如果大学不能在秋季开学，学生、高等教育和经济将面临另一场危机。
As amazing as videoconferencing technology has become, students face financial, practical and psychological barriers as they try to learn remotely. This is especially true for lower-income students who may not have reliable internet access or private spaces in which to study. If they can’t come back to campus, some students may choose — or be forced by circumstances — to forgo starting college or delay completing their degrees.
在视频会议技术日新月异的同时，但学生们在尝试远程学习时，面临着经济、实践和心理上的障碍。对低收入学生来说尤其如此，他们可能没有稳定网络或不受打扰的学习空间可用。如果不能返回校园，一些学生可能会选择——或迫于环境的压力——放弃上大学或推迟拿学位。
The extent of the crisis in higher education will become evident in September. The basic business model for most colleges and universities is simple — tuition comes due twice a year at the beginning of each semester. Most colleges and universities are tuition dependent. Remaining closed in the fall means losing as much as half of our revenue.
高等教育危机的严重性将在9月显现出来。大多数高校的基本商业模式很简单——每年两次在学期开始时收取学费。大多数高校都依赖学费。在秋季继续停课的话，意味着损失多达一半的收入。
This loss, only a part of which might be recouped through online courses, would be catastrophic, especially for the many institutions that were in precarious financial positions before the pandemic. It’s not a question of whether institutions will be forced to permanently close, it’s how many.
这种损失——只有一部分可以通过网课弥补——将是灾难性的，特别是对于许多在疫情前财务状况就不稳定的学校来说。问题不是学校会不会被迫永久关闭，而是这样的学校有多少。
Higher education is also important to the U.S. economy. The sector employs about three million people and as recently as the 2017-18 school year pumped more than $600 billion of spending into the national gross domestic product. Colleges and universities are some of the most stable employers in municipalities and states. Our missions of education and research drive innovation, advance technology and support economic development. The spread of education, including college and graduate education, enables upward mobility and is an essential contributor to the upward march of living standards in the United States and around the world.
高等教育对美国经济也很重要。该行业雇佣了大约300万人，最近的2017-18学年为国内生产总值注入了超过6000亿美元的支出。高校是城市和各州中最稳定的雇主。我们的教育和研究使命是推动创新、发展科技并支持经济发展。教育的普及，包括大学和研究生的教育，使人们可以向上流动，并且是美国和世界各地生活水平不断提高的重要推动力。
The reopening of college and university campuses in the fall should be a national priority. Institutions should develop public health plans now that build on three basic elements of controlling the spread of infection: test, trace and separate.
大学在秋季开学应该是国家的优先事项。现在，学校应在检测、追踪和隔离这三个控制传播的基本要素基础上制定公共卫生计划。
These plans must be based on the reality that there will be upticks or resurgences in infection until a vaccine is developed, even after we succeed in flattening the curve. We can’t simply send students home and shift to remote learning every time this happens. Colleges and universities must be able to safely handle the possibility of infection on campus while maintaining the continuity of their core academic functions.
计划必须基于这样的现实：即使我们成功压平了曲线，在研制出疫苗之前，感染还会有小幅增加或复发。我们肯定不能在每次这种情况发生的时候就把学生送回家，并切换到远程学习模式。高校必须有能力安全地处理校内感染的可能性，同时保持其核心学术职能的连续性。
They must also be sensitive to the particular challenge of controlling the spread of disease on a college campus. A typical dormitory has shared living and study spaces. A traditional lecture hall is not conducive to social distancing. Neither are college parties, to say the least. We must take particular care to prevent and control infection in this environment.
它们还必须对控制校内疾病传播的特殊挑战保持敏感。在宿舍里，生活和学习空间往往是共享的。传统的报告厅不利于保持社交距离。不用说，大学里的派对更是如此。在这种环境下，我们必须格外小心，来预防和控制感染。
Although a vast majority of residential college students will experience only mild symptoms if they contract the coronavirus, students regularly interact with individuals on and off campus who are at high risk of severe illness, or worse. Administrators should be concerned not only for the students in their charge, but also for the broader community they interact with.
尽管绝大多数住校的学生感染新冠病毒后只是出现轻微症状，但学生仍会经常与校园内外的人接触，而这些人可能有较高风险出现重症，或发生更为严重的情况。行政人员不仅应关注他们负责的学生，还应关注与其互动的更广泛社群。
I am cautiously optimistic that campuses can reopen in the fall, but only if careful planning is done now. Fortunately, evidence-based public health protocols for the control of infectious disease have been known for decades. They can be applied to college campuses provided the right resources are in place and administrators are willing to make bold changes to how they manage their campuses.
我对秋季重新开学持谨慎乐观态度，但前提是现在就做好周密计划。幸运的是，几十年来，控制传染病的循证公共卫生方案已经广为人知。只要有合适的资源，而且管理者愿意对校园管理方式做出大胆改变，它们就可以应用到大学校园中去。
Testing is an absolute prerequisite. All campuses must be able to conduct rapid testing for the coronavirus for all students, when they first arrive on campus and at regular intervals throughout the year. Testing only those with symptoms will not be sufficient. We now know that many people who have the disease are asymptomatic. Regular testing is the only way to prevent the disease from spreading silently through dormitories and classrooms.
检测是绝对必要的。所有校园都必须有能力在所有学生首次进入校园时，以及在一年中每隔一段时间，对他们进行新冠病毒的快速检测。仅对有症状的人进行检测是不够的。我们现在知道，许多患者是无症状的。定期检测是防止这种疾病通过宿舍和教室悄悄传播的唯一方法。
Traditional contact tracing is not sufficient on a college campus, where students may not know who they sat next to in a lecture or attended a party with. Digital technology can help. Several states are working to adapt mobile apps created by private companies to trace the spread of disease, and colleges and universities can play a role by collaborating with their state health departments and rolling out tracing technology on their campuses.
在大学校园里，传统的接触人追踪是不够的，因为学生们可能并不知道讲座时坐在旁边的是谁，在聚会上和谁接触过。数字技术可以提供帮助。有几个州正在努力采用私营公司开发的移动应用程序来追踪疾病的传播，大学可以同州卫生部门合作，并在校园推广追踪技术来发挥作用。
Testing and tracing will be useful only if students who are ill or who have been exposed to the virus can be separated from others. Traditional dormitories with shared bedrooms and bathrooms are not adequate. Setting aside appropriate spaces for isolation and quarantine (e.g. hotel rooms) may be costly, but necessary. It will also be necessary to ensure that students abide by the rigorous requirements of isolation and quarantine.
只有在患病或接触病毒的学生能与他人隔离的情况下，检测和追踪才有用。传统的共用卧室和浴室的宿舍无法满足要求。为隔离留出适当的空间（如酒店房间）可能成本不菲，但却是必要的。还必须确保学生遵守严格的隔离要求。
Aggressive testing, technology-enabled contact tracing and requirements for isolation and quarantine are likely to raise concerns about threats to civil liberty, an ideal that is rightly prized on college campuses. Administrators, faculty and students will have to grapple with whether the benefits of a heavy-handed approach to public health are worth it. In my view, if this is what it takes to safely reopen our campuses, and provided that students’ privacy is scrupulously protected, it is worthwhile.
积极的检测、有技术保障的接触者追踪，以及隔离的要求，可能会引发公民自由受到威胁的担忧，而公民自由正是大学校园推崇的理想。管理人员、教师和学生将不得不考虑，在公共卫生方面采取高压手段是否值得。在我看来，如果安全地重新开放校园需要这样做，而且学生的隐私受到严格保护的情况下，这么做是值得的。
Our students will have to understand that until a vaccine is developed, campus life will be different. Students and employees may have to wear masks on campus. Large lecture classes may remain online even after campuses open. Traditional aspects of collegiate life — athletic competitions, concerts and yes, parties — may occur, but in much different fashions. Imagine athletics events taking place in empty stadiums, recital halls with patrons spaced rows apart and virtual social activities replacing parties.
我们的学生必须明白，在研制出疫苗之前，校园生活将会变得不同。学生和员工在校园里可能要戴口罩。即使在校园开放后，大型讲座课程可能仍然要在网上进行。大学生活的传统活动——体育比赛、音乐会，没错，还有派对——可能还会举行，但形式会大不相同。想像一下吧，体育赛事在空荡荡的体育馆举行，演奏厅里的观众们隔排而座，虚拟的社交活动取代派对。
But students will still benefit from all that makes in-person education so valuable: the fierce intellectual debates that just aren’t the same on Zoom, the research opportunities in university laboratories and libraries and the personal interactions among students with different perspectives and life experiences.
但学生们仍将受益于所有让面对面教育具有宝贵价值的东西：和Zoom视频完全不同的激烈智力辩论，在大学实验室和图书馆的研究机会，以及具有不同视角和生活经历的学生之间的个人互动。
Taking these necessary steps will be difficult and costly, and it will force institutions to innovate as we have never done before. But colleges and universities are up to the challenge. Campuses were among the first to shutter during the Covid-19 pandemic. The rapid response that occurred across the country stemmed from our concern for the health of our students and communities, and our recognition that college campuses pose special challenges for addressing infectious disease.
采取这些必要步骤将是困难的，而且花费不菲，它将迫使机构进行我们从未做过的创新。但是高校已经准备好迎接挑战。校园是最早在Covid-19大流行期间关闭的机构。这种全国范围内的快速反应源于我们对学生和社区健康的关注，以及我们认识到大学校园在应对传染病方面所面临的特殊挑战。
Our duty now is to marshal the resources and expertise to make it possible to reopen our campuses, safely, as soon as possible. Our students, and our local economies, depend on it.
我们当前的职责是集中资源和专业知识，使我们能够尽快安全地返校。我们的学生与地方经济都依赖它。