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本文来自美国著名的高等教育杂志：Chronicle，发表于2019年6月4日，由老查留学刘清轩老师翻译。
A surprise announcement this week seemed to make it official: American colleges had become a central theater of geopolitical tensions between the United States and China.
上周一则中国教育部的留学预警似乎正式宣布：美国大学已经成为美国和中国之间政治紧张局势的中心战场。
China’s Ministry of Education on Monday warned students and instructors to “step up risk assessment and prepare accordingly” in light of apparent restrictions on U.S. visas.
鉴于美国签证受到明显限制，上周一中国教育部警告学生和教师“加强风险评估并做好相应准备”。
That worry is top of mind across American campuses. More than 80 percent of colleges and universities with declines in new international-student enrollments said last year that the visa-application process had helped deter foreign students, up from 34 percent in the fall of 2016, according to an annual survey by the Institute of International Education.
这种担心是赴美国读书首要考虑因素。根据国际教育研究所对国际新生下降的大学调查显示，有超过80%的大学表示签证申请程序对其学生下降产生影响；而2016年秋季调查的时候，表现签证申请程序对其学生下降产生影响的大学只有34%。
It’s still too soon to anticipate all the consequences of the Chinese government’s announcement, or of the Trump administration’s reported actions and discussions that preceded it, but the fallout is likely to take many dimensions. Colleges, states, and the federal government see Chinese students in all sorts of ways: as cultural ambassadors, as critical research partners, as enrollment drivers and revenue sources, and as boons to state and local economies.
现在去预测中国政府宣布的所有后果或者特朗普政府报告的行动和讨论之前的结果还为时尚早，但这种后果可能会带来多方面的影响。大学、州和联邦政府以各种方式在审视中国学生：作为文化大使、作为重要研究合作伙伴、作为招生驱动因素和收入来源以及对州和地方经济的利益。
Jeffrey R. Brown, dean of the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, sees reason for concern in Monday’s announcement, “although it’s not a three-alarm fire.”
杰弗里·布朗（Jeffrey R. Brown）伊利诺伊大学香槟分校商学院院长，在周一表达这种担心：“尽管这还算不上灾难性的。”
Urbana-Champaign, whose population of roughly 5,700 Chinese undergraduate and graduate students is by one measure the largest in the country, in many ways tells the story of American international education in the past decade. Its international-student body has swelled in that time, but — in line with colleges at large — enrollments since 2017 have dropped. How will it prepare for any continued slide?
香槟分校大约有5700名来自中国的本科生和研究生，这是美国所有大学中招生中国学生最多的，该校录取国际学生也是美国大学录取国际学生的一个缩影。香槟分校（下文中使用简称UIUC)国际学生总量在过去10年一直在增长，这与美国整体的国际学生数量保持一致。但是从2017年开始，UIUC和美国其他大学的国际学生数量开始下降，那么UIUC如何准备也许会是一个持续的下降趋势呢？
The university has already taken steps to cushion the financial blow. In November it made headlines after its business and engineering colleges — divisions with especially high numbers of Chinese students — bought a three-year insurance policy that would take effect if events like visa bans or a trade war caused a year-over-year decline of at least 18.5 percent in Chinese enrollments.
伊利诺伊香槟大学已采取措施缓解财务冲击。在去年11月，每年都会录取较高人数的中国留学生的商学院和工程学院，买了一份三年的保险，假如由于签证因素或者贸易战中国留学生的入学率同期比下降18.5%，该保单将会生效。这一事件上了报纸的头条。
Brown, a finance and public-policy scholar and an architect of Illinois’s insurance plan, spoke with The Chronicle about Monday’s announcement, and his college’s other preparations for drops in Chinese enrollment. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
财务和公共政策学者、也是伊利诺伊州保险计划的设计师布朗先生，日前接受了本杂志的采访，并表示UIUC为中国入学人数下降所做的其他准备工作，为了令读者更加清晰，我们对采访的内容进行了整理。
U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Jeffrey R. Brown, dean of the Gies College of Business at the U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
01
Q. What’s your reaction to China’s announcement yesterday?
问：您对昨天中国教育部的留学预警何反应？
A.It’s unwelcome news, but not entirely surprising. I think it is as much a shot across the bow as it is a real, meaningful policy change. In the U.S. higher-education industry, we view ourselves as participants in a global higher-education marketplace. We value students from China for a lot of reasons, including the intellectual and cultural contributions they make to our campus, but also because of the importance to the financial models at a lot of institutions. And anything that threatens that is going to be cause for concern.
答：这是不受欢迎的消息，但并不完全令人惊讶。我认为这这个消息就像一张弓射出的箭头，意味着一个真正的，有意义的政策变化。在美国高等教育行业中，我们将自己视为全球高等教育市场的参与者。我们非常重视来自中国的学生，原因很多，包括他们为我们的校园做出的知识和文化贡献，同事中国学生对于很多大学的财务状况非常重要。任何威胁到这一点的事情都会令人担忧。
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Q. There were lots of reports about the U.S. government’s consideration of visa restrictions last year.
问：去年有很多关于美国政府考虑签证限制的报道。
A. So far, nothing has led to a precipitous decline in demand or enrollment. What happened in Beijing yesterday is part of the posturing that one comes to expect in international relations, when countries are in a dispute and are trying to send signals and messages to one another. The Chinese government knows full well that higher education is a major export industry for the U.S. And that’s probably a pressure point in their mind on the U.S. government.
It’s my hope that both sides will see the benefit of not damaging this relationship between U.S. higher ed and Chinese students.
答：到目前为止，并没有什么因素会导致对美国教育的需求急剧下降或者入学人数。北京的留学预警可以理解为是一种姿态，特别是当国家间陷入争议并且正在试图向对方发送信号和信息时。中国政府非常清楚，高等教育是美国的一项主要出口产业。这可能是他们对美国政府的压力点。
我希望双方都能看到不损害美国高等教育与中国学生之间关系的好处。
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Q. The insurance policy was your idea, around 2015?
问：保险政策是您在2015年左右的想法？
A. It was through a conversation with my colleagues in the finance department [Timothy Johnson and Morton N. Lane]. We realized that no matter what we did, there were things like political events or health pandemics that were just beyond our control, and that a significant-enough share of our enrollment and finances were tied to Chinese demand that we should insure it. That conversation started in September of 2015.
It took us a good 18 months to come to agreements on the term, by which time it was early 2017, at the beginning of the new [Trump] administration. The policy took effect July 1, 2017. So our desire to manage this risk really had nothing to do with who was in the White House.
答：是的，当时我和财务部门的同事[Timothy Johnson和Morton N. Lane]聊天。我们意识到无论做了什么，都有一些事情，比如我们无法控制的政治事件或健康流行病，使得我们无法确保中国学生入学率和中国学生入学率相关的财务状况，所以我们应该去投保。那次谈话始于2015年9月。
我们花了18个月的时间来达成协议，到2017年初，在新的[特朗普]政府开始时。该政策于2017年7月1日生效。因此，我们期望控制这种风险实际上与谁入驻白宫无关。
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Q. The policy covers the engineering and business colleges up to $60 million.
问：该政策涵盖工程和商业学院高达6000万美元。
A. That was the maximum exposure that our two colleges had. If there’s a permanent policy change, the insurance is not a permanent solution. It just buys us a year of extra time to make whatever adjustments we need.
答：这是我们两所学院可以透露最多的内容。如果存在永久性的政策变更，则保险不是永久性的解决方案。它只是给我们一年的额外时间来做出我们需要的任何调整。
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Q. What other steps in the colleges have you taken to adjust for declines in the meantime? A lot can happen between zero and 18.5 percent.
问：在此期间，您还采取了哪些其他措施来调整下降？在零到18.5％之间可能发生很多事情。
A. We’ve got a four-part strategy. The first thing is, as long as there is a single student coming to the United States, we want Illinois to be the place they want to come. Let’s make sure we’ve got good relationships there, let’s make sure we stay in contact with our alumni, let’s deliver an exceptional student experience, let’s do our marketing and recruitment well.
Step No. 2 is the insurance. Step No. 3 is diversification. I can’t speak for engineering, but in the business school, for example, we launched a fully online M.B.A. program that has given us a much more diverse global footprint. Even if there is a student in China, they can continue to complete their degree, because they don’t actually have to come to the U.S.
The fourth step is building financial reserves to weather any kind of shock.
答：我们有一个由四部分组成的策略。
首先，只要有一个学生来到美国，我们希望伊利诺伊成为他们想要来的地方。确保我们在这个领域建立良好的关系，确保与校友保持联系，让我们提供卓越的学生体验，让我们做好营销和招生工作。
第2步是保险。
第3步是多样化。我不能代表工程学，但在商学院，我们推出了一个完全在线的MBA课程，为我们提供更加多样化的全球课程体验。即使在中国的学生，他们也可以完成继续完成学位，因为他们实际上不必来美国。
第四步是建立财政储备以应对任何形式的冲击。
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Q. What’s the rough breakdown of Chinese students in the business college?
问：商学院中国学生的粗略分类是什么？
A. I have 3,100 undergrads, about 300 of which are from China. So just under 10 percent. In our face-to-face graduate programs, we’ve got around 1,100 students in various master’s programs, about 500 of which are from China. So that’s where our exposure is. And it wasn’t accidental. Some of the programs that we offer, like a master’s program in accountancy, were specifically designed for international students — that program is like 90-percent students from China.
For us, it’s those specialized master’s programs where we definitely face the biggest risk to our operations and our financial model.
We recruit in China, we have strong alumni relationships in China, we have corporate relationships in China for placing students. These programs were really designed to support that entire effort.
答：我们有3,100名本科生，其中约300名来自中国。所以不到10％。在我们面授的硕士课程中，我们有大约1,100名学生，其中约500人来自中国。这就是我们透露的信息。这不是偶然的。我们提供的一些课程，如会计硕士课程，是专为国际学生设计的 - 该课程有大约90％的中国学生。
对我们来说，正是那些特别设置的硕士项目使我们必须面临运营和财务模式的最大风险。
我们在中国进行 招生，中国有很强的校友以及合作关系。这些项目的确旨在支持整个工作。
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上周关于教育部预警之后相信大家已经阅读到很多解读，老查留学对于此次发出的预警并不感到惊讶。公派及敏感专业签证在某种程度上受到一定的限制，这可能是中美贸易战在教育领域迄今为止我们最明显的感受。但从今年老查留学申请和签证情况来看，录取和签证均与去年情况一致，只要是真正赴美学习的学生，无论是夏校还是入读本科，均未有遇到拒签。如果大家遇到关于签证及美本申请规划的问题，欢迎拨打留学热线4000-503-703或者添加小助手微信：laocha103咨询!
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