讀書真能改變命運？
Fewer rural students at colleges
高校農村學生越來越少了
The proportion of students from China's rural areas attending key universities has been falling significantly since the 1990s.
自20世紀90年代以來，我國高校農村學生的比例大幅下降。
The high cost of a university education plus the difficulty of finding a job after graduation has contributed to the prevailing idea in the countryside that "education is useless," the People's Daily reported.
人民日報報道稱，大學高昂的學費，再加上畢業後的就業壓力，讓來自農村的很多人覺得“讀書無用”。
Many rural families are ending their children's education earlier and sending them out to work to alleviate their economic burden.
許多農村家庭的孩子都會提早輟學，然後外出打工，幫家裏減輕負擔。
Entrance to elite universities is also becoming more difficult for students from the countryside because of fewer education resources or opportunities to travel.
由於教育條件的限制，以及沒有機會開闊眼界，對於農村的孩子們來說，好大學的門檻太高了。
Top universities favor students with a wider knowledge of the world and have developed other skills in addition to their high test scores alone, the newspaper said.
該報還指出，除卻高分外，頂尖的大學更青睞那些有着開闊的眼界且有一定特長的學生。
Peking University has about 10 percent of its students from rural areas at present, down from the 30 percent between the 1970s and early 1990s. Similar figures were reported at other universities, including Tsinghua University, also in Beijing, and Fudan University in Shanghai.
現在，北京大學共有10%的學生來自農村，但是在上個世紀70年代至90年代間，農村學生所佔的比例是30%。其他的包括清華、復旦在內的高校也出現了同樣的情況。
Huang Keke, a student at Peking University, was the first person from her hometown—Xiliu Village in Shaanxi Province—to go to such a top university. She had to apply for postgraduate study to give her an edge in the job market because she couldn't find a job.
來自陝西省西流鄉的清華大學學生黃XX是他們鄉的第一個考上名牌大學的學生。但是她不得不申請讀研，以此讓自己往後就業時更有優勢，因爲她現在根本就找不到工作。
She said her father has become disillusioned with higher education and believed it would have been better for his children to have looked for work earlier.
她說，她的父親已經對讀大學不抱期望了，他覺得讓孩子早日工作還更好些。
Her brother Huang Lei didn't sit the college entrance examination but started work on a construction site instead.
她的弟弟連高考都未參加，現在在一個建築工地上打工。
The rural poor, the newspaper said, used to believe that "education changes fate" but feel that is no longer true as they see more and more graduates returning home after failing to find a job.
報道指出，以前，農村人都相信“讀書能改變命運”，但是在看到越來越多的畢業生因找不到工作而回老家之後，他們對高等教育也不再抱期望了。
Many families reportedly have been made poorer because of the cost of higher education. Sending a son or daughter to university could cost the equivalent of a family's income for 10 years in Gansu Province's Huining County. Half the families who had been lifted out of poverty had returned to that state again because of their investment in higher education.
據報道，很多家庭因爲高昂的大學學費而變得越來越窮。在甘肅會寧，共一個孩子上大學就能用掉他們十年的收入。近半數的已基本脫貧，搬出那個地區的人因爲供孩子上大學又重新回到了那個地方。
