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.
老師們也一樣，大多數時候不在學校，他們的生活也在別處。和大多數學生一樣，他們的目標就是成功。他們的工作迫使他們前進——成為終身教授、得到晉升、拿到更多薪水、獲得外部機會——這些廣義上來說就是學術成果。不管其他人怎么說，這些學術成果與教育的基礎沒有多大關系。證據就是基本上沒有多少本科生能讀懂任課教授的學術成果，大家覺察到其中的差別，因此認為教授的學術成果荒唐可笑或是無關緊要，其中有一些確實是這樣。但是大家也覺察到由于教授沒有一心一意撲在教學上，因此他們不需要很勤奮地學習,他們為自己創造了一個大型溫床，名叫“大學”的溫床。
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.
這是完全錯誤的。和他們的學生一樣想要在美國獲得成功的雄心勃勃的教授，拼命地工作著。他們的學術成果就算浮夸炫耀甚至難以卒讀，依然耗費了大量心血。他們可以花費一年或兩年的時間寫出一篇能夠在審稿期刊上出版的文章，他們的論文都是實實在在的：它們的注釋都反映出他們的確認真閱讀了大量的材料，吸收掌握了大量的東西，真正體現了對學術研究的獻身精神。蹩腳的文章——那些作者抄襲、偷工減料、復制他人的文章——很快就能檢測出來。進行學術研究的人智力能力髙度發達，而且能夠不斷鞭策自己以達到某個標準：而這些成果和學生、大眾甚至通常對其他學者來說都沒有什么實際相關性，這一點是學術界這出悲喜劇的核心內容。
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.
學生和教授們達成了協議：兩方不需要全心全意地投入課堂中的教與學。學生寫著抽象的、過于學究氣的論文；教授們則為學生們能夠變得抽象和學究氣的能力打分，評價通常都是非常聰明。他們的論文可能很優秀，只不過缺少感情；他們的論文也可能是從網絡上摘錄下來的，通常都是這樣。不管屬于哪一類，沒有人愿意為論文耗費太多精力——因為生活在別處。教授們的精力要留著進行學術研究，而學生的精力要留給朋友、社交生活、志愿者工作，要留著發展人脈并占據有利位置，以牢牢抓住真正的圣杯——第一份工作。
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