你在找富于机会的大学？大学的地理位置非常重要

“We are 30 minutes from a Starbucks,” quipped James F. Jones Jr.

“我们离星巴克有30分钟的路程，” 杰姆斯·F·琼斯打趣道。

That line from the now former president of Sweet Briar College in an interview with Inside Higher Ed on the day he announced the school was closing illustrated just how isolated the women’s college is from everything in southwestern Virginia.

在宣布学校关闭的当天，斯威特布赖尔学院的前校长接受“走进高等教育”网站的采访时这样说道。他意在表明，女子学院在弗吉尼亚西南部十分偏远的位置。

This summer, as high-school students go on college tours, they’ll likely only pay attention to a school’s location in terms of the surrounding amenities: Are there enough restaurants and bars? Is it close to the beach or the mountains? I’ll never forget my mom’s remark as we drove the last 30 miles into Ithaca, N.Y. the summer before my senior year of high school: Just what are you going to do here?

在这个高中毕业生即将开始大学之旅夏天，他们关注的可能仅仅是学校的周边设施：附近是否有足够的餐厅和酒吧？学校是否离海滩或者山很近？我永远不会忘记高中毕业那年夏天，在开车去30公里外的伊萨卡时，我妈妈对我说的一句话：你要在这里做什么？

But a college’s location should mean more to students than whether they can quickly grab a tall cappuccino before class. Even in a virtual age, where it is easy to connect to anyone and anything, a college’s physical place in the world matters more than ever before in the ultimate success of graduates.

对学生而言，大学的地理位置不仅仅意味着能否在上课前的短时间内买到一杯中杯的卡布奇诺。即使是在一个虚拟的时代，一个能够轻而易举连通任何人与物的时代，大学的地理位置也比以往毕业生的成就更为重要。

Earning a college degree is no longer just about sitting in a classroom following a script outlined by a course catalog or a professor at the front of a lecture hall. And it’s not only about the experience of living in a dorm or participating in activities on the campus. The value of higher ed increasingly comes from what happens off campus — the so-called experiential learning embedded in research projects, volunteer work, internships, apprenticeships, and study abroad.

获得一个大学学位不再仅仅是坐在教室里看课程大纲所列出的材料或在学术大厅里听教授讲课，也不仅仅是住宿或是参加校园活动的经历。高等教育的价值越来越多地来自于校园生活之外——即所谓的在研究项目中的体验式学习，志愿者活动，实习，见习和出国。

In order to experience those off-campus opportunities, students either need to travel or go to a school in a place that has a strong and diverse economy offering a multitude of options for experiential learning. This is a big reason why many of the colleges and universities that have improved their reputations dramatically in the past several decades are in cities: the University of Southern California, Boston University and Northeastern, New York University, University of Miami, and American and George Washington universities.

为了得到这些校外实践的机会，学生要么去旅游，要么去一个拥有强大而多样的经济实力，能提供大量实践机会的学校。这就是为什么在过去几十年里声誉提高不少的大学大都位于城市的一个很重要的原因：南加州大学、波士顿大学、波士顿东北大学、纽约大学、迈阿密大学、美国大学和乔治华盛顿大学都是如此。

In cities like Washington, D.C., you see experiential learning at play every day. While most college students who want to intern in the nation’s capital must do so during the summer, those who go to college in Washington can use the city as their campus any time.

在像华盛顿特区这样的城市里，体验式学习司空见惯。一般想要去首都实习的大学生只有在暑假期间才能这么做，而在华盛顿本地上大学的学生却可以随时随地将城市作为他们的学园。

That’s exactly what Kyle Anderson, a senior at American University, has done. He has held four internships during his time in Washington, most of them during the academic year. Not only is the competition for those intern spots less intense during the school year, it also has helped him prepare for the workplace, where a full-time job is a mash-up of activities, not just about taking classes for nine months and working for three in the summer.

美国大学即将毕业的大学生凯尔·安德森就是这么做的。在华盛顿期间，他参加了四次实习，大部分都是在学期里。这样不仅争夺实习岗位的竞争不那么激烈，也能为未来的工作做准备——毕竟全职工作本身就是一个混搭的活动，而非上九个月的课后，只在暑假时工作三个月。

“I’m figuring out how to juggle multiple responsibilities now,” Anderson said.

“我现在懂得了各方面如何兼顾，”安德森说。

There are even rankings to help prospective students determine the best cities for college. The American Institute for Economic Research publishes an annual list of the top 75 metro areas in the U.S. on overall economic and academic environment, quality of life and employment opportunities. The list is divided into four categories based on population size. Boston, San Jose, Boulder, Colo., and Ithaca, N.Y., topped the most recent list in each group.

如今甚至出现了帮助准大学生们确定最适合上大学的城市的排名。美国经济研究所公布了一份年度榜单，列出了在整体经济、学术环境、生活质量和就业机会方面排行美国前75名都市地区。该榜单基于人口规模分了四组。波士顿，圣何塞，博尔德，科罗拉多州和纽约州的伊萨卡，荣登各组榜首。

The Institute also publishes a list of cities where college students migrate after graduation. LinkedIn goes one step further by gathering industry-specific data on its members to show students which cities retain their graduates and which ones might be best for their majors. If you want to major in film, for instance, not surprisingly you might want to head to Los Angeles.

该研究所还发布了毕业后的大学生迁移的城市列表。 LinkedIn更通过收集其成员的特定行业的数据，进一步向学生展示哪些城市留住了自己的毕业生，哪些城市最契合他们的专业。比方说，你若想主修电影，向往洛杉矶也就不足为奇。

By comparing those lists, students can get a good sense of places where experiential learning opportunities are plentiful. Unfortunately, those metro areas are few and far between today compared to only a few decades ago.

通过对比这些榜单，学生们就可以知道哪些地方有丰富的实践学习的机会。不幸的是，与几十年前相比，如今这样的都会区又少又难找。

The availability of good jobs are closely correlated to the share of the population with college diplomas, and increasingly the nation is segregated along education lines. In 1970, nearly all of the metropolitan areas in the United States were within five percentage points of the national average for adults with a college degree. Today only about half of those areas are.

得到一个好工作的可能性与拥有大学文凭的人口比率密切相关，是的，这个国家正日益被教育所分界。1970年，美国几乎所有都市的成年人大学学位拥有率都不高于全国平均比率5个百分点。而如今，在大约一半的都市中，该比率超过了全国平均比率5个百分点。

If a college’s location matters, does that mean isolated places like my alma mater (Ithaca College) are destined for a future of irrelevance? Not necessarily. For one, the city of Ithaca is one of the best destinations to go to college simply because it’s home to Cornell and Ithaca College. Both schools have also helped to mitigate their far-flung location by opening programs and campuses in major cities, such as New York and Los Angeles. And some schools, such as big state universities such as Virginia Tech and Penn State, or wealthy small colleges, such as Grinnell in Iowa, succeed because of their deep pockets and great reputations, in spite of their location

如果一所大学的位置真的重要，这是否意味着如我母校（伊萨卡学院）那样偏僻的地方未来注定会无足轻重？那可不一定。单凭一点，康奈尔大学和伊萨卡学院均位于此，就可以说伊萨卡是最适合上大学的城市之一。这两所学校也通过在各主要城市，如纽约和洛杉矶，开设课程和校园的方法，来弥补它们位置遥远的不足。有的学校，例如弗吉尼亚理工大学和宾夕法尼亚州立大学那样大型的州立大学，又如爱荷华州的格林内尔大学那样有钱的小学院，它们的成功来源于它们无懈可击的经济实力和良好口碑，而非它们的位置。

Most of the nation’s colleges and universities were built for a different era, when being spread out geographically was seen as an asset because it offered easy access for students no matter where they lived. Today, with ease of travel and communication, having a college in your backyard doesn’t matter as much as being located in a dynamic city.

美国的大部分高校建立的时代与如今不同，当时高校分散地分布被视为一种优点，这样能为住在各处的学生提供便利。今天，旅行和通信已是如此方便，把大学建在你后院还不如建在一个充满活力的城市里。

That’s why the Minerva Project, an elite liberal-arts college being built for this century, decided to relocate its students each year. Students enrolled at Minerva, which is backed by some $95 million in venture capital, will move around the world to live and take their classes online in places such as Buenos Aires, Berlin, and Istanbul. Students have classes in the morning and then use the afternoon to explore the city and take on internships or other study opportunities.

这就是为什么密涅瓦计划（大学），一所建于本世纪的精英文理学院，决定每年迁移它的学生。在大约为9500万风险投资的支持下，学生在密涅瓦注册后，将到世界各地的移动生活，并在诸如布宜诺斯艾利斯，柏林，伊斯坦布尔之类的地方上他们的网校。学生们上午上课，下午游览城市，并在当地实习或得到其他学习机会。

Established colleges with built up physical campuses obviously can’t follow the lead of Minerva, which hopes to compete with Stanford, Harvard, and Yale for the best students. But as you’re looking at schools this summer, don’t just search for the closest Starbucks. Be sure to also check out what the place offers in terms of learning opportunities off the campus. It could matter more than anything in terms of what you ultimately do with that bachelor’s degree.

那些建立了物理校园的高校显然无法追随密涅瓦的步伐，而这所学校则希望与斯坦福，哈佛和耶鲁争夺最优秀的学生。这个夏天，当你寻找大学的时候，不要只是搜索最近的星巴克。一定要记得弄清该地会有什么样的校外学习机会。这可能是与你取得学士学位后最终做的事情关系最大的一点了。