Rebuilding the American dream machine
重建美国梦机器

Jan 19th 2006 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition

FOR America’s colleges, January is a month of reckoning. Most applications for the next academic year beginning in the autumn have to be made by the end of December, so a university’s popularity is put to an objective standard: how many people want to attend. One of the more unlikely offices to have been flooded with mail is that of the City University of New York (CUNY), a public college that lacks, among other things, a famous sports team, bucolic campuses and raucous parties (it doesn’t even have dorms), and, until recently, academic credibility.
对美国的大学而言，一月是一个清算的月份。大多数要进入将于秋季开学的下一学年学习的申请必须在12月底前完成，因此一所大学的声望就有了客观依据：申请人的多少。纽约城市大学，一所公立学院，与其他学校相比，它没有一支声名显赫的运动队，没有田园诗一般的校园，也没有喧嚣嘈杂的派对——甚至连宿舍都没有，而且，直到最近也没取得学术上的可信度，可就是这所大学的办公室塞满了学生们寄来的申请函，这简直有些令人难以置信。

A primary draw at CUNY is a programme for particularly clever students, launched in 2001. Some 1,100 of the 60,000 students at CUNY’s five top schools receive a rare thing in the costly world of American colleges: free education. Those accepted by CUNY’s honours programme pay no tuition fees; instead they receive a stipend of $7,500 (to help with general expenses) and a laptop computer. Applications for early admissions into next year’s programme are up 70%.
城市大学主要吸引人的地方在于它为从2001年开始为聪明过人的学生所设立的培养计划。6万名城市大学的五所顶尖学院学生中，约有1100人能得到“免费教育”，这在花费巨大的美国大学界可是一件稀罕事。被纳入城市大学荣誉计划的学生无需支付学费，相反，他们还获得一份7500美元的定期生活津贴（用于补助日常开销）以及一本笔记本电脑。这所学校申请尽早被批准进入下一学年计划的学生达到了70%。