经济学人｜Day503-没有商量，耶鲁-新加坡国立大学学院就要消失啦

文章来源：《经济学人》Sep 4th 2021 期 Asia 栏目

Yale-NUS, Singapore’s first liberal-arts college, closes its doors

新加坡第一所文科学院耶鲁-新加坡国立大学学院关门了

Lessons learnt

学到的教训

Students are up in arms

Up in arms 起来进行武装斗争,或者非常愤怒,准备打架

学生们很生气

CLASSES THE next day were cancelled, the email said, and everyone was encouraged to attend a town hall instead. A wave of speculation rippled through the student body at Yale-NUS, a college set up in 2013 as a tie-up between Yale University and the National University of Singapore (NUS). At the meeting on August 27th administrators announced that the college’s programmes will be combined with another at NUS to form a new institution by 2022. When the current crop of first-years graduate, Yale-NUS will cease to exist.

tie-up 联合

邮件中说，第二天的课程被取消了，大家被鼓励去市政厅。耶鲁-新加坡国立大学（2013年由耶鲁大学和新加坡国立大学(NUS)联合成立）的学生中掀起一波猜测浪潮。在8月27日的会议上，管理人员宣布，学院将与新加坡国立大学的另一个学院的项目合并，到2022年形成一个新的机构。当这批研究生一年级学生毕业时，耶鲁-新加坡国立大学将不复存在。

Most undergraduate students in Singapore choose specialised courses of study, such as medicine or law. Some universities had begun experimenting with interdisciplinary curriculums but it was with Yale-NUS, the city-state’s first liberal-arts college, that Singapore signalled its commitment to a new approach. Its launch was billed as a grand experiment testing whether an American-style liberal-arts education could sink roots in Asia.

interdisciplinary 跨学科的

在新加坡，大多数本科生选择专业课程学习，如医学或法律。一些大学已经开始尝试跨学科课程，但正是新加坡的第一所文科学院耶鲁-新加坡国立大学(Yale-NUS)，标志着新加坡致力于采用一种新方法。它的推出被宣传为一项宏大的实验，测试美国式的博雅教育能否在亚洲扎根。

The decision to close the college was made by NUS, which is consolidating six departments, Yale-NUS among them, into three new colleges. The restructuring , which affects about 18,000 students or half the student body, is in fact a mark of the university’s commitment to the liberal arts , argues Chan Heng Chee, a diplomat who sits on the college’s board. The purpose is to make “liberal-arts education more accessible [to Singaporeans] and more inclusive”, she says. Yale-NUS is “exclusive”, she argues. It admits at most 1,000 students a year, 40% of whom are foreign. The new college will enroll twice as many students and will, if NUS fees are anything to go by, charge them less.

关闭该学院的决定是由新加坡国立大学做出的，它将包括耶鲁-新加坡国立大学在内的6个系合并为3个新学院。该校董事会成员、外交官Chan Heng Chee表示，此次重组影响了约1.8万名学生，相当于该校学生总数的一半，重组实际上是该校致力于人文学科的标志。她说，这样做的目的是让“新加坡人更容易接受博雅教育，也更包容”。她认为，耶鲁-新加坡国立大学是“独有的”。它每年最多招收1000名学生，其中40%是外国学生。这所新学院将招收两倍的学生，如果新加坡国立大学的费用可信，它将降低收费。

Another reason to close the college was its “financial unsustainability” , says Ms Chan. Yale-NUS had hoped eventually to secure as much private funding as do top-tier American liberal-arts colleges, but by March had raised just a measly $320m. Concern about the financial model “started the conversation” about what to do with the college, says Ms Chan. But Pericles Lewis, the first president of Yale-NUS, who also sits on the board, notes that it had “a few years left” to achieve its fundraising targets, and could have doubled the number of students it admits.

fundraising 资金筹集的

Chan Heng Chee表示，关闭该学院的另一个原因是其“财务不可持续”。耶鲁大学-新加坡国立大学曾希望最终能获得和美国顶级文理学院一样多的私人资助，但到3月份仅筹集了3.2亿美元，这一数字少得可怜。Chan Heng Chee表示，对财务模式的担忧“引发了有关如何处理这所学院的讨论”。但是耶鲁大学-新加坡国立大学的第一任校长，同时也是董事会成员的Pericles Lewis指出，耶鲁大学还有“几年时间”来实现筹款目标，并且本可以将招收的学生数量增加一倍。

Some professors and students suspect there were other considerations at play. Political activism is frowned upon in Singapore, which has been ruled by the same party since 1959. Yale-NUS students were more likely to express their political views and were better organised than their peers at other universities , says Cherian George, the author of a recent report on academic freedom in Singapore. Ms Chan pooh-poohs the notion that the government was keen to muzzle mouthy students. The government, she says, knew what it was signing up for when it launched the college.

frown upon 不赞成
pooh-pooh 对…嗤之以鼻
muzzle 钳制…的言论

一些教授和学生怀疑还有其他因素在起作用。新加坡自1959年以来一直由同一个政党统治，政治激进主义在新加坡是不受欢迎的。最近一份关于新加坡学术自由的报告的作者Cherian George说，耶鲁-新加坡国立大学的学生比其他大学的学生更有可能表达他们的政治观点，也更有组织性。对于政府热衷于压制多嘴学生的言论的说法，Chan女士嗤之以鼻。她说，政府在创办这所学院的时候，就知道自己要做什么。

At the opening of the new campus in 2015 Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister, said that the college would have “to adapt the Yale model to Asia”. Four years later the college appeared to do just that when it cancelled a course on dissent taught by a prominent playwright because, it said, it was not sufficiently rigorous. Responding to allegations that the college had caved to political pressure, Mr Lewis conducted an investigation which yielded no evidence of government coercion. Yet Ong Ye Kung, then the education minister, supported cancelling the course, declaring in Parliament that “political conscientisation”—when people become aware of how they are oppressed—“is not the taxpayer’s idea of what education means”.

在2015年新校区的开幕式上，新加坡总理李显龙表示，该学院将“调整耶鲁模式以适应亚洲”。四年后，学院似乎就这么做了，它取消了一门由一位著名剧作家教授的关于异议的课程，称其不够严格。针对有关该学院屈服于政治压力的指控， Lewis先生进行了一项调查，没有发现政府胁迫的证据。然而，当时的教育部长Ong Ye Kung支持取消这一课程，他在议会宣称，“政治认识”(当人们意识到他们是如何受到压迫的时候)不是纳税人对教育意义的理解”。

News of the closure came as a shock to students and teachers, who were not consulted. Neither was the college president, Tan Tai Yong, who was reportedly “gobsmacked and flabbergasted” when informed in July. During the virtual town hall, microphones were muted; students had to send questions via a mediator. At the end of the meeting, students could be heard shouting with frustration, according to the college newspaper. All they are likely to get in return for their “conscientisation” on this issue is silence. ■

gobsmacked 大吃一惊的
flabbergast 使大吃一惊

学院关闭的消息令学生和教师感到震惊，他们没有征求他们的意见。也没有和学院院长Tan Tai Yong商量，据报道，他在7月份被告知此事时“大吃一惊”。在“虚拟”的市政厅，麦克风被静音;学生们必须通过 一个mediator提出问题。据校报报道，在会议结束时，可以听到学生们沮丧地大喊。他们在这个问题上的“认识”可能得到的回报是沉默。■