The faculty, too, is often absent: Their real lives are also elsewhere. Like most of their students, they aim to get on. The work they are compelled to do to advance—get tenure, promotion, raises, outside offers—is, broadly speaking, scholarly work. No matter what anyone says this work has precious little to do with the fundamentals of teaching. The proof is that virtually no undergraduate students can read and understand their professors'scholarly publications. The public senses this disparity and so thinks of the professors'work as being silly or beside the point. Some of it is. But the public also senses that because professors don't pay full-bore attention to teaching they don't have to work very hard, they've created a massive feather bed for themselves and called it a university.
老师们也一样，大多数时候不在学校，他们的生活也在别处。和大多数学生一样，他们的目标就是成功。他们的工作迫使他们前进——成为终身教授、得到晋升、拿到更多薪水、获得外部机会——这些广义上来说就是学术成果。不管其他人怎么说，这些学术成果与教育的基础没有多大关系。证据就是基本上没有多少本科生能读懂任课教授的学术成果，大家觉察到其中的差别，因此认为教授的学术成果荒唐可笑或是无关紧要，其中有一些确实是这样。但是大家也觉察到由于教授没有一心一意扑在教学上，因此他们不需要很勤奋地学习,他们为自己创造了一个大型温床，名叫“大学”的温床。
This is radically false. Ambitious professors, the ones who, like their students, want to get ahead in America, work furiously. Scholarship, even if pretentious and almost unreadable, is nonetheless labor-intensive. One can slave for a year or two on a single article for publication in this or that refereed journal. These essays are honest: Their footnotes reflect real reading, real assimilation, and real dedication. Shoddy work—in which the author cheats, cuts corners, copies from others—is quickly detected. The people who do this work have highly developed intellectual powers, and they push themselves hard to reach a certain standard: That the results have almost no practical relevance to the students, the public, or even, frequently, to other scholars is a central element in the tragicomedy that is often academia.
这是完全错误的。和他们的学生一样想要在美国获得成功的雄心勃勃的教授，拼命地工作着。他们的学术成果就算浮夸炫耀甚至难以卒读，依然耗费了大量心血。他们可以花费一年或两年的时间写出一篇能够在审稿期刊上出版的文章，他们的论文都是实实在在的：它们的注释都反映出他们的确认真阅读了大量的材料，吸收掌握了大量的东西，真正体现了对学术研究的献身精神。蹩脚的文章——那些作者抄袭、偷工减料、复制他人的文章——很快就能检测出来。进行学术研究的人智力能力髙度发达，而且能够不断鞭策自己以达到某个标准：而这些成果和学生、大众甚至通常对其他学者来说都没有什么实际相关性，这一点是学术界这出悲喜剧的核心内容。
The students and the professors have made a deal: The students and the professors have made a deal: The students write their abstract, over-intellectualized essays; the professors grade the students for their capacity to be abstract and over-intellectual, and often genuinely smart. For their essays can be brilliant, in a chilly way; they can also be clipped off the Internet, and often are. Whatever the case, no one wants to invest too much in them—for life is elsewhere. The professor saves his energies for the profession, while the student saves his for friends, social life, volunteer work, making connections, and getting in position to clasp hands on the true grail, the first job.
学生和教授们达成了协议：两方不需要全心全意地投入课堂中的教与学。学生写着抽象的、过于学究气的论文；教授们则为学生们能够变得抽象和学究气的能力打分，评价通常都是非常聪明。他们的论文可能很优秀，只不过缺少感情；他们的论文也可能是从网络上摘录下来的，通常都是这样。不管属于哪一类，没有人愿意为论文耗费太多精力——因为生活在別处。教授们的精力要留着进行学术研究，而学生的精力要留给朋友、社交生活、志愿者工作，要留着发展人脉并占据有利位置，以牢牢抓住真正的圣杯——第一份工作。
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