Business
商业报道
Schumpeter Angst for the educated
毕业生的烦恼
A university degree no longer confers financial security

MILLIONS of school-leavers in the rich world are about to bid a tearful goodbye to their parents and start a new life at university.
成千上万的毕业生着即将泪别父母开始大学生活。
Some are inspired by a pure love of learning.
他们中的有些是被纯粹的求知欲驱使。
But most also believe that spending three or four years at university—and accumulating huge debts in the process—will boost their chances of landing a well-paid and secure job.
但是更多人相信读三四年大学将会有助于他们觅得高收入、稳定的工作。与此同时，求学期间会大量负债。
Their elders have always told them that education is the best way to equip themselves to thrive in a globalised world.
他们的学长总是告诉他们：接受教育是使自己在全球化的世界里立于不败之地的最好办法。
Blue-collar workers will see their jobs offshored and automated, the familiar argument goes.
蓝领工人将会看到他们的岗位被迁移海外以及被自动化代替，类似的论点层出不穷。
School dropouts will have to cope with a life of cash-strapped insecurity.
辍学者将要过着经济困难的不安定生活。
但是毕业生中的佼佼者掌握着主动。
There is some evidence to support this view.
一些证据支持着这种看法。
A recent study from Georgetown University's Centre on Education and the Workforce argues that obtaining a post-secondary credential is almost always worth it.
乔治敦大学教育和劳动力中心最近的一项研究表明获得高等教育证明总是物有所值。
Educational qualifications are tightly correlated with earnings:
学历与薪酬紧密的联系在一起：
an American with a professional degree can expect to pocket $3.6m over a lifetime;
在美国，获得专业学位的劳工职业生涯总预期薪酬为360万；
one with merely a high-school diploma can expect only $1.3m.
仅获得高中文凭的劳工职业生涯的总预期薪酬为130万。
The gap between more- and less-educated earners may be widening.
这种收入差距还在加大。
A study in 2002 found that someone with a bachelor's degree could expect to earn 75% more over a lifetime than someone with only a high-school diploma. Today the premium is even higher.
2002年的一项关于劳工职业生涯中获得的总薪酬研究表明：获得学士学位的将比获得高中学历高出75%。如今，奖金甚至更高。
But is the past a reliable guide to the future?
但是能照搬经验吗？
Or are we at the beginning of a new phase in the relationship between jobs and education?
亦或说我们处于职业与学历关系的新阶段吗？
There are good reasons for thinking that old patterns are about to change—and that the current recession-driven downturn in the demand for Western graduates will morph into something structural.
有充足的理由让人们相信旧模式即将改变：现今经济不景气导致的对西方毕业生需求的减少将会演变为结构之变。
The gale of creative destruction that has shaken so many blue-collar workers over the past few decades is beginning to shake the cognitive elite as well.
过去数十年来，创造性毁灭之潮使得众多蓝领为之烦恼，如今，它开始开始席卷认知精英界。
The supply of university graduates is increasing rapidly.
毕业生数量逐年递增。
The Chronicle of Higher Education calculates that between 1990 and 2007 the number of students going to university increased by 22% in North America, 74% in Europe, 144% in Latin America and 203% in Asia.
高等教育年鉴估计1990至2007的接受大学教育的人数中：北美增加了22%，欧洲增加了74%，拉丁美洲增加了144%，亚洲增加了203%。
In 2007 150m people attended university around the world, including 70m in Asia.
2007年世界范围内1.5亿人接受大学教育，其中亚洲有7000万。
Emerging economies—especially China—are pouring resources into building universities that can compete with the elite of America and Europe.
新兴经济体正的塔形土木建设与欧美高等学府想抗衡的高校的热潮正方兴未艾，中国尤甚。
They are also producing professional-services firms such as Tata Consulting Services and Infosys that take fresh graduates and turn them into world-class computer programmers and consultants.
他们同时也是诸如塔塔咨询、infosys等专业服务公司的缔造者。大学毕业生在此类公司里完成了化蝶蜕变。
The best and the brightest of the rich world must increasingly compete with the best and the brightest from poorer countries who are willing to work harder for less money.
发达国家最优秀最聪明的毕业生必须逐渐与不发达国家的卖力工作、薪酬低廉的毕业生竞争。
At the same time, the demand for educated labour is being reconfigured by technology, in much the same way that the demand for agricultural labour was reconfigured in the 19th century and that for factory labour in the 20th.
同时，对于受教育劳工的需求正在被重新分配，正如19世纪农业劳动力和20世纪工业劳动力的重新分配一样。
Computers can not only perform repetitive mental tasks much faster than human beings.
电脑不仅执行重复性工作上比人类更加快，而且电使业余者从事原本只有专家才能做的事情：
They can also empower amateurs to do what professionals once did: why hire a flesh-and-blood accountant to complete your tax return when Turbotax will do the job at a fraction of the cost?
当Turbotax能够花费很低做同样的工作为什么要去雇佣会计去处理税务事宜？
And the variety of jobs that computers can do is multiplying as programmers teach them to deal with tone and linguistic ambiguity.
通过程序员的努力，电脑能做的工作越来越多，因为他们能够处理言语歧义。
Several economists, including Paul Krugman, have begun to argue that post-industrial societies will be characterised not by a relentless rise in demand for the educated but by a great hollowing out,
包括Paul Krugman在内的一些经济学家开始主张后工业时代社会以对持续上升对受教育劳工的需求以及产业空洞化为特征，
as mid-level jobs are destroyed by smart machines and high-level job growth slows.
因为中端职位被智能机器扼杀，高端职位需求增长缓慢。
David Autor, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points out that the main effect of automation in the computer era is not that it destroys blue-collar jobs but that it destroys any job that can be reduced to a routine.
麻省理工学院的David Autor指出：电脑自动化的主要影响不仅在于他们摧毁了蓝领的岗位，还在于摧毁了能够被分解成例程的岗位。
Alan Blinder, of Princeton University, argues that the jobs graduates have traditionally performed are if anything more offshorable than low-wage ones.
普林斯顿大学的Alan Blinder指出：传统上毕业生所做的工作更可能与低薪酬工作相形渐远。
A plumber or lorry-driver's job cannot be outsourced to India. A computer programmer's can.
水暖工、大车司机的岗位不能外包给印度，电脑程序的岗位可以。
A university education is still a prerequisite for entering some of the great guilds,
大学教育仍是进入诸如制药、法律以及学术界的先决条件，
such as medicine, law and academia, that provide secure and well-paying jobs.
他们提供了高收入、稳定的工作。
Over the 20th century these guilds did a wonderful job of raising barriers to entry—sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for self-interested ones.
20世纪这些行业使得入门门槛大为提高。有些出于好意，有些出于自身利益。
But these guilds are beginning to buckle.
这些行业开始联合。
Newspapers are fighting a losing battle with the blogosphere.
报业正在与博客界的斗争中负隅顽抗。
Universities are replacing tenure-track professors with non-tenured staff.
大学用非终身制职员替代终身制职员。
Law firms are contracting out routine work such as discovery to computerised-search specialists such as Blackstone Discovery. Even doctors are threatened,
法律公司把诸如显示证据的工作外包给电脑化的搜索专家，比如说Blackstone Discovery。
as patients find advice online and treatment in Walmart's new health centres.
医生也受到了威胁，以为病人可以上沃尔玛的新健康中心寻找意见以及治疗方案。
Dreaming spires, meet pin factory Thomas Malone of MIT argues that these changes—automation, globalisation and deregulation—may be part of a bigger change:
麻省理工学院的Thomas Malone主张这些变革—自动化、全球化—可能是更大变革的一部分：
the application of the division of labour to brain-work.
劳动力分配到脑力劳动的应用。
Just as Adam Smith's factory managers broke the production of pins into 18 components, so companies are increasingly breaking the production of brain-work into ever tinier slices.
正如Adam Smith's的经理把生产比别针分解成了18个步骤。因此公司逐渐地将脑力劳动工作内容分解的更为更细。
TopCoder chops up IT projects into bite-sized chunks and then serves them up to a worldwide workforce of freelance coders.
TopCoder公司将IT项目切割成一个个细小的模块，交由世界范围内的程序员去完成。
These changes will undoubtedly improve the productivity of brain-workers.
这些变化将毫无疑问地改善脑力劳动者的效率，避免了专业公司收取的高昂服务费。
They will allow consumers to sidestep the professional guilds that have extracted high rents for their services.
而且这将使得更多的脑力工作中集中精力在他们最擅长的领域，
And they will empower many brain-workers to focus on what they are best at and contract out more tedious tasks to others.
而将更加低附加值的工作外包给他人。
But the reconfiguration of brain-work will also make life far less cosy and predictable for the next generation of graduates.