実践ビジネス英語 ディクテーション (9/13, 14)

NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。

Lesson 11のテーマは、’Coping With Student Loan Woes’（学生ローンの返済支援）でした。Vignetteでは、アメリカで大きな社会問題化している学生ローンの問題が話題になりました。テキストによると、2018年度に大学を卒業した学生の69パーセントが平均2万9800ドルのローンを抱えているそうです。

Talk the Talkでは、Heatherさんがご自身の学生ローン返済の体験や、大学で学費が高騰している理由などについて話されています。

Coping With Student Loan Woes

（S: 杉田敏先生　H: Heather Howardさん）

S: This time around, the vignette talks about an announcement by Alex & Alex that it will launch a new package of student loan benefits.

That should be highly appealing as many people in the States have crippling student debt obligations these days.

Heather, you’ve talked about your debt load from your collage days.

How did you deal with it, if I may ask?

H: Sometimes I feel like I had no debt at all, compared to the amounts I hear about these days.

I graduated from college with about $10,000 in outstanding student loans.

As I recall, there was a selection of repayment plans, of different lengths, and I chose the longest one.

I opted for a 10-year plan, and every month, for 10 years, I went down to the post office and got a money order to mail to the United States.

I was very fortunate to receive some scholarship money when I went to college, including one scholarship that was specifically aimed at reducing the burden of student loans.

Recipients had to have a job and participate in some kind of volunteer activity, and in return they could receive up to $2,500 a year.

Again, as I recall, that scholarship alone saved me $7,500 in loans.

What about you, Mr. Sugita, did you have any student debt when you graduated?

S: Well, I worked my way through college in Japan, so I didn’t have any student loans.

When I was admitted to the Ohio State University for a post graduate program, I was quite fortunate to get a waiver of tuition in addition to a generous fellowship.

I couldn’t believe it at first.

To make sure, I remember going to my dictionary and looking up to the word “waiver.”

H: I would have too.

I can see myself asking the admissions office, “Just to be clear, before I sign anything I don’t have to pay, right?”

That’s an area where you’d want to be sure.

S: Why do you think college education has become so expensive in the U.S.?

Some people point to factors like the salaries of teaching staff and administrators.

H: I just read a long article about this in an American magazine, and one of the factors it pointed to was lower state funding to public universities.

Over the past three decades, it said, many state legislatures have been spending a decreasing amount per student on higher education.

The easiest way to compensate for this lost revenue was to partly transfer the cost to students and bring in wealthier students.

And this competition over high-paying kids eventually spread into big, long-term operating expenses such as non-teaching staff.

The article also said that most global rankings of universities prioritize how much research is published by members of the faculty.

This isn’t related to whether students are learning.

But administrators reportedly pay attention to those rankings in the competition for students.

So they encourage faculty to focus on research and pay star professors accordingly.

Words and Expressions

outstanding: 未払いの、未解決の

waiver: 免除、適用除外

お疲れ様でした。お読みくださり、ありがとうございました。