A Free Online University Tests the Waters
美国“人民”大学提供免费网络教育

After a lifetime in business and academia, Shai Reshef finally found something he could not do: retire.

赛·雷谢夫(Shai Reshef)一辈子致力于生意和学术事务，他终于发现有一件事情自己无论如何做不到，那就是退休。

So in 2009, Mr. Reshef, an Israeli-born entrepreneur, founded University of the People, an online school offering a four-year U.S.-style undergraduate education for free. The institution, based in Pasadena, California, has admitted 1,500 students from 132 countries.

因此，这位以色列出生的企业家在2009年建立了“人民”大学(University of the People)，这是一所网络大学，免费提供美式四年制本科教育。学校总部设在加利福尼亚州帕萨迪纳，已从132个国家招收了1500名学生。
 

作为民众大学的创始人，赛·雷谢夫的目标是提供能实现就业的在线教育，同时让各种文化相互了解。

While most of its initial financing came from Mr. Reshef, it has since drawn the support of organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and corporations like Hewlett Packard.

雷谢夫为学校提供了大部分启动资金。随后，这所大学开始得到各类组织和公司的支持，其中包括比尔及梅琳达·盖茨基金会(Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)以及惠普(Hewlett Packard)。

The teachers, many from top universities, are all volunteers. The provost, David Harris Cohen, was vice president of Columbia University. Last year, New York University agreed that students who successfully finished their first year at University of the People would be eligible to apply to N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi, where they would complete their education free if accepted.

教师全都是志愿者，其中许多人来自顶尖大学。教务长戴维·哈里斯·科恩(David Harris Cohen)原先是哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)的副校长。去年，纽约大学(New York University)表示，在“”大学顺利读完一年级的学生有资格申请入读纽约大学阿布扎比分校(NYU Abu Dhabi)，条件合格者可以免费完成学业。

Mr. Reshef described his campaign to “open the gates of higher education to those who cannot afford it.”

雷谢夫把自己的工作描述为“让高等教育之门向财力不足的人敞开”。

Q. How did you get started?

问：你是怎么开始做这件事的？

A. I looked around and saw that everything that was needed was already available for free. All I had to do was bring it together.

答：我先研究了一下，发现所有需要的东西都可以免费得到。我只需要把它们整合在一起。

I mean open source technology, available for anyone to use for free; open educational resources; content that people produce and put on the Internet for everyone to use. And the new Internet culture of social networking, where people share, teach and learn from each other for free.

这其中包括了免费向所有使用者提供的开放源代码技术、开放的教育资源以及人们做好后放在网上供大家使用的内容。还有新的社交网络文化，也就是人们在互联网上免费共享或者相互传授知识。

Q. Can students study any subject?

问：学生们什么专业都可以读吗？

A. No. We offer only business administration and computer science degrees. These are the two programs that are most likely to help people find a better job, and that’s what our students want. They want a better chance for the future.

答：不是这样。我们只颁发企业管理和计算机科学学位。这两种专业很可能帮人们找到更好的工作，而这就是我们的学生所希望的。他们想让自己将来有更好的机会。

But also, which is just as important for us, these two programs are global. Our program is 40 courses long. And every time a student takes a class they are put together with 25 students from 25 countries.

另外，这是两种全球性专业，对我们来说这个原因同样重要。我们开设了40门课程。上课时，每个班都会有25名学生，而且来自25个不同的国家。

Imagine what happens when students from India and Pakistan study together. They learn to know each other, to respect each other. Instead of being enemies outside of the class, they become friends. We believe that by doing so we make peace a bit closer.

想象一下印度学生和巴基斯坦学生在一起上课会出现什么样的情景吧。他们将学会互相了解，互相尊重。他们会成为朋友，而不是像在课堂外面那样相互敌对。我们相信这样做会让我们向着和平更进一步。

Q. What about the instructors?

问：师资方面的情况怎么样？

A. For our 1,500 students we have 2,900 volunteer professors who jumped on board to help our students — a ratio of about two professors for every student. I don’t think there are many universities with this ratio.

答：我们有1500名学生，2900名志愿教师，他们都在为学生提供帮助——师生比例大约是二比一。我觉得能达到这种师生比例的大学并不是很多。

Q. What do students pay?

问：哪些环节是收费的？

A. When they apply, students have to pay an application fee, which ranges from $10 to $50 depending on the gross domestic product of their country of residence. For example, the United States would be $50. So would the United Kingdom and Japan.

答：入学申请，学生们需要缴纳申请费，数额从10美元到50美元不等，具体取决于他们所在国家的国民生产总值(gross domestic product)。比如说，美国学生的申请费是50美元，英国和日本学生也是如此。

Q. What are some $10 countries?

问：哪些国家的学生可以交10美元？

A. South Sudan, Ethiopia, Nepal. If they don’t have it, we waive it. But starting in September we are also asking our students to pay for exams. While we waive 95 percent of the cost of higher education, we want the program to become financially sustainable. An exam costs us $100 to administer and grade. But if a student can’t afford that, he or she can go to our micro-scholarship portal.

答：南苏丹、埃塞俄比亚、尼泊尔。如果没那么多钱，我们就免收申请费。但从9月份开始，我们就要收考试费了。我们免除了95%的高等教育收费，但我们也想让学校有继续办下去的资金。对我们来说，一场考试的监考和阅卷开销是100美元。如果学生拿不出考试费，他们还可以求助于我们的微型奖学金网站。

Q. Explain the micro-scholarship portal.

问：请解释一下什么是微型奖学金网站。

A. We are the second largest university on Facebook after Harvard, which obviously means we should try harder, right? What we are trying to do there is to tell them, “Please help our students, some of them can’t even afford the $100 for an exam.” Let’s say a student needs $500. This will come from small amounts of $5 or $10 rather than a single donation. Also there will be a direct connection between the students and the donors.

答：在Facebook上，我们是注册人数排名第二的大学，仅次于哈佛(Harvard)。很明显，这就是说我们得更加努力，对吧？我们在这个网站上告诉人们，“请帮帮我们的学生，他们中有些人甚至连100美元的考试费都拿不出来。”假设一名学生需要500美元，那么这笔钱将会来自多笔5美元或者10美元的小额捐赠，而不是一大笔捐款。而且学生和捐款人会建立直接联系。

Q. How does the teaching work?

问：教学怎么进行？

A. When students sign up for a class they are put together with students from 20 or more different countries. They study together for 10 weeks. When they go into the “classroom,” the first thing that they see is the profile of their fellow students, which is very similar to a Facebook profile. Then they find the lecture notes for the week, the reading assignment for the week and the homework assignment. They also find the discussion question of the week.

答：学生们选了课程之后，我们就会把来自20个或者20多个国家的学生放在一个班里。他们将在一起学习10周。他们进入“教室”后，首先看到的将是其他同学的个人资料，这和Facebook上的个人资料非常像。然后他们就会看到当周课程的讲义，知道要读哪些书，有哪些作业。他们还会看到当周要讨论的问题。

The discussion question is the core of our studies. Let’s say the first student is Chinese. Just because the morning starts earlier in China, so he will go into the classroom, read the material, see the discussion question and post his own original contribution to the discussion. Let’s say that the second student is Indonesian and she does the same thing. But she decides to comment on what the Chinese student said.

问题讨论是我们教学的核心。假设第一位上线的学生来自中国，这只是因为中国的白天到来的比较早。他会进入教室，阅读教学材料，看到要讨论的问题，然后把自己要说的内容贴出来。假设第二位学生来自印尼，她所做的和第一位学生相同，只是她会对前面中国学生的发言做出评论。

Every week each student is expected to make one original contribution. The instructor reads everything going on in the classroom, but gets involved only if the peer-to-peer learning doesn’t work as well as it should. For example, if a student asks a question and none of their fellow students was able to answer it. Or a student says something wrong and nobody corrected him or her.

每周每位学生都要做一次原创论述。老师会查看全班所有人的发言，不过只会在同学们互相学习的这个过程没能发挥应有作用的时候，才会参与进来。比如说，一位学生提出的问题其他学生都回答不了，或者一位学生说错了却没人予以纠正。

At the end of the week the students take a quiz to see if they have mastered the material. They hand in their homework, which is assigned randomly to peers and graded by them, under the supervision of an instructor. They get a grade, start a new topic next week. At the end of 10 weeks they take a final exam and go on to the next course.

这一周快结束时会进行小测验，以便了解学生们是否已经掌握了教学材料中的内容。他们提交的作业会随机交给其他同学打分，这将在教师的监督下进行。学生们拿到这周的成绩后，从下一周开始讨论新的问题。10周过后他们就会参加期末考试，然后学下一门课。

Currently, you are in the process of applying for accreditation from an agency recognized by the U.S. government. What difference will being accredited make?

问：目前你们正在向美国政府认可的机构申请认证。获得认证后会有哪些不同？

A. We are talking about students from the entire world. Having said that, most of our students, be they American or from developing countries, appreciate the American higher education system. They want to study in an American university. And our students want us to be accredited. Accreditation means, for a student, both that it’s a legitimate institution and that they will find a job. All over the world people are worried about this phenomenon of diploma mills. And people are afraid of institutions which are not legitimate. And I think that they are right. Because accreditation is a stamp of quality.

答：我们所谈到的情况是学生来自世界各地。话虽如此，大多数学生，不管他们是美国人还是来自发展中国家，都更欣赏美国的高等教育体系。他们想在一所美国大学学习，希望我们能获得认证。对学生们来说，认证既意味着这是一所合法大学，也意味着他们将会找到工作。全世界都对山寨文凭泛滥的现象感到担心。不合法的学校让人们敬而远之。我觉得他们是对的——认证就是一枚质保图章。

Q. What distinguishes University of the People from other online universities like P2P University?

问：“人民”大学和P2P大学(P2P University)等其他网络大学有什么不同？

A. That’s a good question, but I would even broaden it to include the new phenomenon where Harvard and M.I.T. give away their courses for free online to hundreds of thousands of people.

答：问得好，而且我还想把这个话题延伸到一个新的层面，那就是哈佛和麻省理工大学(MIT)已经把课程放在网上，免费供数十万人学习。

We are not doing this just for the sake of the knowledge. We are offering a degree program. P2P is a great thing for people who are seeking knowledge. People can study any subject they want. But that is not a diploma. The same goes for Harvard and Stanford putting their courses online. These are courses that hundreds of thousands of people take, and great professors teach them. But people do not get credit for them.

我们这样做不光是为了传播知识。我们提供的是学位课程。对寻求知识的人来说，P2P大学很了不起，人们可以随心所欲地学习任何课程，但他们拿不到学位。哈佛和斯坦福大学(Stanford)的在线课程也是如此。这些课程有数以十万计的受众，有很棒的授课老师，但听课的人拿不到学分。

Q. What are some of the factors behind limiting the number of students?

问：限制学生人数的原因有哪些？

A. It’s less than three years since we started teaching our first students. So while we are done developing all the courses, we’re still working on strengthening our academic quality. We want to make sure that the quality is there. And that whatever is needed to give good service to our students is also there before we start to grow faster.

答：从我们给第一批学生上课到现在还不到三年。因此，虽然我们完成了所有课程的筹备，但我们仍在设法提高教学质量。我们希望保证这方面的质量。在我们加快发展步伐前，我们还要准备好为学生提供优质服务所需要的一切。

Every 10 weeks we accept another 100 students. We’ll do that for the next few terms, until we feel completely confident about our academic base, and about our ability to grow, and at that point we’ll start to grow much faster.