For years, studies have found that first-generation college students—those who do not have a parent with a college degree—lag other students on a range of education achievement factors.
“第一代大学生”是指那些父母没有大学学位的大学生，多年以来，很多研究发现他们在一系列的教育成就方面落后于其他的学生。
Their grades are lower and their dropout rates are higher.
他们的成绩比其他学生低、辍学率比他们高。
But since such students are most likely to advance economically if they succeed in higher education, colleges and universities have pushed for decades to recruit more of them.
但是鉴于这类学生只要在高等教育上取得成功，他们就更可能在经济上到得提升，所以各大学院和大学几十年来一直在努力招收更多这类的学生。
This has created "a paradox" in that recruiting first—generation students, but then watching many of them fail, means that higher education has "continued to reproduce and widen, rather than close" an achievement gap based on social class, according to the depressing beginning of a paper forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science.
但是根据即将在《心理科学》杂志上发表的一篇论文令人忧愁的开篇所说，这就出现了一个“矛盾现象”，招收那些第一代大学生，但随后目睹他们中的很多人失败，这就意味着高等教育“继续在制造和扩大基于社会阶级的成就差距，而不是缩小它。
But the article is actually quite optimistic, as it outlines a potential solution to this problem, suggesting that an approach (which involves a one-hour, next-to-no-cost program) can close 63 percent of the achievement gap (measured by such factors as grades) between first-generation and other students.
但是这篇文章事实上相当地乐观，因为它概述了解决该问题的可能方案，提出的那个方案（它涉及一个一小时，几乎无花费计划）能缩小第一代大学生和其他学生之间的百分之六十三的成就差距（通过测量考试成绩等因素）。
The authors of the paper are from different universities, and their findings are based on a study involving 147 students (who completed the project) at an unnamed private university.
这篇论文的作者来自不同的大学，他们的发现基于一项涉及某所私立大学147名学生的研究（这些学生完成了该研究项目）。
First generation was defined as not having a parent with a four-year college degree.
“第一代大学生”被定义为他们的父母没有四年制大学学位。
Most of the first-generation students (59.1 percent) were recipients of Pell Grants, a federal grant for undergraduates with financial need, while this was true only for 8.6 percent of the students with at least one parent with a four-year degree.
大多数第一代大学生（59.1%）是佩尔助学金的获得者，这是一个为需要经济帮助的本科生设立的联邦助学金。而事实上父母中至少有一方有四年制大学学位的学生中，仅有8.6%是该助学金的获得者。
Their thesis—that a relatively modest intervention could have a big impact—was based on the view that first-generation students may be most lacking not in potential but in practical knowledge about how to deal with the issues that face most college students.
他们的论文表明相对适中的“介入”会有大影响，其着眼点是第一代大学生最缺乏的或许不是潜能，而是如何处理大多数大学生都面临的问题的实际知识。
They cite past research by several authors to show that this is the gap that must be narrowed to close the achievement gap.
他们引用由若干作者做过的研究来表明，要想缩小第一代大学生与其他大学生之间的成就差距，就必须缩小他们在解决问题的实际知识上的差距。
Many first-generation students "struggle to navigate the middle-class culture of higher education, learn the 'rules of the game,' and take advantage of college resources," they write.
他们写道，很多第一代大学生“努力想摸索高等教育的中产阶级文化，学习它的‘游戏规则，’和利用大学资源。”
And this becomes more of a problem when colleges don't talk about the class advantages and disadvantages of different groups of students.
当大学没有提及不同群体的大学生的阶级优势和劣势时，成就差距就更成了一个问题。
"Because U.S. colleges and universities seldom acknowledge how social class can affect students' educational experiences, many first-generation students lack insight about why they are struggling and do not understand how students 'like them' can improve."
“因为美国高校很少承认社会阶级对学生教育经历的影响，许多第一代大学生看不透他们为什么在苦苦挣扎，也不明白‘像他们’这样的学生该如何改善这一局面。”