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No one in this picture is evil; no one is criminally irresponsible. It's just that smart people are prone to look into matters to see how they might go about buttering their toast. Then they butter their toast.
这里没有人是邪恶的；也没有人犯下不负责任的罪过。只是，聪明的人都习惯于琢磨如何才能顺利谋生的问题。
As for the administrators, their relation to the students often seems based not on love but fear. Administrators fear bad publicity, scandal, and dissatisfaction on the part of their customers. More than anything else, though, they fear lawsuits. Throwing a student out of college, for this or that piece of bad behavior, is very difficult, almost impossible. The student will sue your eyes out. One kid I knew (and rather liked) threatened on his blog to mince his dear and esteemed professor (me) with a samurai sword for the crime of having taught a boring class. (The class was a little boring—I had a damned cold—but the punishment seemed a bit severe.) The dean of students laughed lightly when I suggested that this behavior might be grounds for sending the student on a brief vacation. I was, you might say, discomfited, and showed up to class for a while with my cellphone jiggered to dial 911 with one touch.
而对于管理者来说，他们和学生的关系建立在恐惧而不是关爱的基础上，管理者们害怕负面宣传、丑闻以及客户不满。然而，他们最害怕的是打官司。因为这样或是那样的不良行为将学生逐出大学是很难的，几乎是不可能的，学生会将学校告上法庭。我认识的一个学生(一个挺喜欢的学生）曾在博客中威胁要用武士刀将他亲爱的、受人尊敬的教授(也就是我）剁成肉酱，罪行是上了一堂无聊的课。（那堂课是有一些无聊，因为我得了该死的感冒，但是惩罚似乎重了点。）我当时提出，这种行为完全可以勒令他休学一段时间。教导主任只是微微笑了笑，当时的我可以说相当窘迫。之后一段时间，我上课的时候都为手机调好快速拨号功能，随时准备拨打911报瞥。
You'll find that cheating is common as well. As far as I can discern, the student ethos goes like this: If the professor is so lazy that he gives the same test every year, it's okay to go ahead and take advantage. The Internet is amok with services selling term papers and those services exist, capitalism being what it is, because people purchase the papers—lots of them. Fraternity files bulge with old tests from a variety of courses.
你们会发现作弊也很普遍。我所了解的学生信条如下：如果教授懒到每年都出同样的试题，那么他们便会投机取巧，因为双方都有更好的事情要做。网络上充斥着期末论文销售服务，而这些服务存在的原因就是有人会去购买论文，而且买的人很多，这就是资本主义。兄弟会文件里塞满了各门课程的旧试卷。
One of the reasons professors sometimes look the other way when they sense cheating is that it sends them into a world of sorrow. A friend of mine had the temerity to detect cheating on the part of a kid who was the nephew of a well-placed official in an Arab government complexly aligned with the U.S. Black limousines pulled up in front of his office and disgorged decorously suited negotiators. Did my pal fold? Nope, he's not the type. But he did not enjoy the process.
当教授们发现有学生作弊的时候，他们有时睁一只眼闭一只眼，这让他们感到悲伤。我的一位朋友曾经冒失地发现一位学生作弊，而这位学生是和美国有着复杂联盟关系的阿拉伯政府某位身居要职的官员的侄子。后来，黑色的豪华轿车开来停在他的办公室前面，从车里涌出来大批衣着得体的谈判人。我那位哥们吓得腿发软了吗？没有，他不是那种人，不过他实在不喜欢这个过程。
What colleges generally want are well-rounded students, civic leaders, people who know what the system demands, how to keep matters light, not push too hard for an education or anything else; people who get their credentials and leave the professors alone to do their brilliant work, so they may rise and enhance the rankings of the university.
一般来说，大学需要的是全面发展的学生、公众领导人以及那些知道这个社会体制需要、知道如何让天下太平、不会为了教育或是其他任何东西用力过猛的人们；那些只为获得文凭并不打扰教授的人们。这样，教授可以专心做学术研究，以便能够不断提升学校的排名。
In a culture where the major and determining values are monetary, what else could you do? How else would you live if not by getting all you can, succeeding all you can, making all you can?
在一个以崇尚金钱为主要和决定性价值观的文化里，还能怎么办？除了尽你们所能去获取、去成功、去挣钱，还能怎么生活？
