文理学院毕业之后怕找不到工作？普林斯顿前招生官谈博雅教育

普林斯顿前招生官在我们的上海办公室录制了系列特别视频，今天我们来听她谈谈美国的博雅教育。

My name is Yosepha and I’m the director of student outreach for InGenius Prep. I’m here with Tracy Matthews, one of our former admissions officers from Princeton and Swarthmore College. Tracy worked in the admissions office at Swarthmore for 8 years, so I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about your experience in the liberal arts education.

TM：好的。其实普林斯顿和斯沃斯莫都给学生提供文理教育。斯沃斯莫是一所小型的文理学院，普林斯顿虽然是研究型大学，但是也具有很多文理学院的特点。它的课程设置上要求学生必须涉猎不同的学科，包括自然科学、社会科学、美术、表演艺术等等学科，所以学生能接触到各种学科和课程。很多学生申请大学时，是没决定好专业的，或者只是有一个大概的意向。在进入大学后，因为需要先上核心课程或者叫基础课程，这样学生就必须广泛了解和探索各个学科，很可能会发现他们以前根本不知道的专业和学科等等。这样在第二年选专业的时候就能做出更明智的选择。在学生毕业的时候，他们也了解很多其他学科的知识，而不是只了解自己的专业，所以学生的学业不止有深度，也有广度。这对学生的批判性思维、分析能力、写作能力也都有很大的好处。这就是文理学院教育模式的目的和目标。

Okay, great. Actually both Swarthmore College and Princeton University offer a liberal arts education for its students. Swarthmore is a small liberal arts college and Princeton is a research university, but also has elements of liberal arts. Liberal arts is a concept that requires students to take a variety of courses across the curriculum, typically in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the fine arts and performing arts, so that they are exposed to a variety of coursework. A lot of students when they apply to college are not quite sure what they want to pursue as a major, many students apply undecided, or just have a broad idea of what they want to study. But taking, in most colleges what they call either a core curriculum or a distribution requirement, students are forced to take courses across the curriculum and explore subjects that they may not have known existed. So that when they have to decide on a major in their sophomore year, they are more knowledgeable, they make a wiser decision as to what they want to pursue, and they graduate knowing a broad range of academic areas. Certainly they have their major so they have an opportunity to study in depth, but they are also able to study in a broad way as well. Another goal of a liberal arts education is to know how to think critically, how to think and read analytically, and how to write effectively

YG：我认识很多学生，他们总跟我说害怕文理学院毕业之后找不到工作，你怎么看这种说法呢？

So I actually have a lot of students say to me that they don’t think that they can find a job after graduating from a liberal arts college, what do you think about that?

TM：我觉得不能这么说。现在就业市场竞争激烈，家长和学生都希望有更实际的本领，想在毕业之后就赶快找到好工作。确实有一些专业的毕业生更好找工作，或者更容易获得高薪职位，比如工程学、经济学等等。但即使是英文专业，或者心理学专业，只要你尽早开始丰富自己的简历，跟学校的就业指导中心保持联系，多实习，多工作，丰富自己的简历，锻炼面试技巧，这样在毕业的时候，你就能有很多工作经验，帮助你找到更好的工作。

I don’t think that’s the case at all. I know that in this job market, students and parents are very anxious about majoring in something practical to ensure employment. Certainly there are majors that have a higher rate of employment right out of college and/or that lead to high-paying jobs, like engineering or business/economics. But even as an English major or psychology major, as long as you start building your resume as soon as you get to college, making that connection with the career services office at your institution, and working with people in the career services office to find those internships and jobs, to build your resume skills, and to build your interviewing skills, you will gain the skills and have some practical experience that will ensure that you secure a job after graduating from college.

YG：我有很多耶鲁的同学、同事，还有很多毕业于其他顶尖的文理学院的朋友，他们有很多是英文专业的，但是却进入了顶尖投行、咨询公司工作。所以文理学院教给学生思考和分析的方法是对个人职业发展非常有帮助的。

And to that point I have had a lot of classmates at Yale and my friends and colleagues from other top liberal art schools, they are English majors and they ended up going into investment banking and consulting, so I know that liberal arts colleges really teach you how to think, how to think critically, which is really helpful in the professional world.

InGenius Prep是一家创办于耶鲁大学，服务于全球的教育咨询机构。拥有业界人数最多的前招生官顾问团队。每位梦想导师都来自哈佛、耶鲁、普林斯顿、哥伦比亚、伯克利等顶尖院校，用一对一的交流，提供给广大学生最直接的来自招生办的信息。通过入学申请的指导来传递国际化人才选择的理念，帮助学生更好地成长。

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