SCOTT CACCIOLA2026年9月16日Early in the fall semester of the 2025-26 academic year, Lisa Belkin, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s journalism school, realized that one of her students, Jamie Beaton, had yet to show up for class.2025-26学年秋季学期初，哥伦比亚大学新闻学院兼职教授丽莎·贝尔金发现，她的一名学生杰米·比顿还没来上过课。Belkin, who avoids combing the internet for information about her students, knew nothing about Beaton. She was curious about his absence, though, so she reached out to a dean, who sent an email.从不上网搜索学生信息的贝尔金对比顿一无所知。但她对他的缺席感到好奇，于是联系了一位院长，院长发了一封邮件。Beaton was apologetic in his reply, saying he had mixed up his schedule. He was in New Zealand, teaching a course in entrepreneurship at the University of Auckland, but would be back in New York the next week.比顿在回复中致歉，说他日程有冲突。他当时在新西兰，在奥克兰大学教一门创业课程，但下周会回纽约。That was when Belkin decided to break her rule. Who was this guy?这时，贝尔金决定破例去了解一下，这家伙是谁？Beaton, she learned, had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2016, picking up a master’s degree in applied mathematics along the way. He had gone on to collect an MBA from Stanford University. Then a law degree from Yale University. That was followed by a doctor of philosophy in public policy from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar — all before age 28.她得知比顿2016年以优异成绩从哈佛大学毕业，获得一个应用数学硕士学位。之后他在斯坦福大学获得MBA，在耶鲁大学获得法律学位，又在牛津大学获得公共政策哲学博士学位，且是罗德学者——这一切都在28岁前完成。Attending classes remotely and in person, he earned additional master’s degrees from — deep breath — the University of Pennsylvania (education entrepreneurship), Stanford (education technology), Princeton University (finance), Cornell University (healthcare policy and economics), Dartmouth College (implementation science), King’s College London (war studies) and Tsinghua University in Beijing (global affairs).通过远程和线下课程，他还在——深吸一口气——宾夕法尼亚大学（教育创业）、斯坦福大学（教育技术）、普林斯顿大学（金融）、康奈尔大学（医疗政策与经济学）、达特茅斯学院（实施科学）、伦敦国王学院（战争学）和清华大学（全球事务）获得了硕士学位。Still, there was more: Beaton, who was born and raised in New Zealand, was a founder and the CEO of Crimson Education, a college admissions counseling service that has been valued at more than $600 million.还有：在新西兰出生和长大的比顿是Crimson Education的创始人和首席执行官，这家大学招生咨询公司估值超过6亿美元。A week after his apologetic reply, Beaton made his first appearance in Belkin’s classroom. As the semester went on, he did not miss an assignment.回复致歉一周后，比顿第一次出现在贝尔金的课堂上。整个学期，他没有错过一次作业。“He was a joy to get to know,” Belkin said. “But it was also the weirdest relationship I’ve ever had with a student.”“认识他是一件愉快的事，”贝尔金说。“但这也是我与学生有过的最奇怪的关系。”‘Passions and Curiosities’“激情与好奇心”A 5-foot-6 personification of naked ambition whose LinkedIn profile has been the subject of memes and Reddit threads, Beaton has gone to the head of a rarefied class — perpetual students.一个身高1米67的赤裸野心化身，其领英个人资料一直是网络迷因和Reddit帖子的主题，比顿已进入一个稀有的阶层——永久学生。If he continues collecting advanced degrees at such a swift pace, he will surpass Benjamin B. Bolger, who has racked up 16 at age 50. He might even beat Michael Nicholson, an octogenarian forever scholar with more than 30 degrees to his name.如果他继续以如此快的速度收集高级学位，他将超过本杰明·B·博尔格，后者50岁时已积累16个学位。他甚至可能击败迈克尔·尼科尔森，一位拥有30多个学位的八旬永久学者。Away from his studies, Beaton, 31, has become a player in the field of college admissions counseling. His clients pay between $30,000 and $200,000 for a multiyear program designed to enhance their children’s chances of getting into top universities.学业之外，31岁的比顿已成为大学招生咨询领域的参与者。他的客户支付3万至20万美元，参加一个多年期项目，旨在提高子女进入顶尖大学的机会。His own academic background has raised some questions, starting with: How can this be real? Is it education as performance art? An elaborate marketing ploy for his business?他自己的学术背景引发了一些问题，首先是：这怎么可能是真的？这是把教育当成行为艺术了吗？是给他的企业精心设计的营销策略吗？The truth, Beaton said, is more prosaic.比顿说，真相比较无聊。“The first five degrees had a clear skill acquisition component to them,” he said. “Since then, it’s really been about following different passions and curiosities.”“前五个学位有明确的技能获取成分，”他说。“从那以后，真的是关于追随不同的激情和好奇心。”We met on a recent afternoon in Manhattan, not far from where he lives with his wife, Priscilla Beaton. His day was crowded with appointments, including an evening event at the Harvard Club in Midtown, where he and his Crimson Education colleagues would hold a meet-and-greet with potential clients.最近一个下午，我们在曼哈顿见面，离他和妻子普里西拉·比顿住的地方不远。他的日程很满，包括在市中心哈佛俱乐部的晚间活动，他和Crimson Education同事将在那里与潜在客户举行见面会。“I love the action, and I love a jam-packed day,” he said. “It’s good fun.”“我喜欢行动，喜欢排得满满的一天，”他说。“这很有趣。”So many things are, according to Beaton, “good fun.” An abridged list: Helping students decode the college admissions process. Studying the viability of distressed companies. Grabbing snacks in the Amtrak cafe car. Reading big books in one gulp. Riding the fastest roller coaster in the world on a recent trip to Saudi Arabia.根据比顿的说法，很多事情都是“有趣的”。一份简略清单：帮助学生解读大学招生过程。研究陷入困境的公司的生存能力。在国铁咖啡车厢里吃零食。一口气读完大部头书籍。在最近一次沙特阿拉伯之旅中玩世界上最快的过山车。He was cheerful and accommodating. He spoke rapidly, in fully formed paragraphs. Shortly before we met, he emailed me a 61-page legal notice stating that Crimson Education had initiated a $28 million hostile takeover of Kip McGrath, an international tutoring provider.他开朗而随和。他说话很快，一说就是有头有尾的一整段。在我们见面前不久，他给我发了一封61页的法律通知，称Crimson Education已对Kip McGrath发起2800万美元的敌意收购，后者是一家国际辅导服务提供商。He keeps up with his studies even while traveling the world on business. A few weeks ago, he was in India when he submitted his end-of-semester project for a course at Brown University, where he is working toward a master’s in data science. He said he tries to get six hours of sleep a night.即使在世界各地出差时，他也跟得上学业。几周前，他在印度提交了布朗大学一门课程的期末项目，他在那里攻读数据科学硕士学位。他说他每晚尽量睡六个小时。“Oh, he’s lying,” John Key, a former prime minister of New Zealand, said in a telephone interview.“哦，他在撒谎，”新西兰前总理约翰·基在电话采访中说。Key, the chair of Crimson Education, considers Beaton the second-brightest New Zealander, behind the noted scientist Ernest Rutherford, who died nearly 90 years ago.基是Crimson Education的董事长，他认为比顿是第二聪明的新西兰人，仅次于著名科学家欧内斯特·卢瑟福，后者在近90年前去世。“And I’m only saying that because it’s hard to take it away from the guy who split the atom,” Key said.“我这么说只是因为，总不能跟那个劈开原子的人争第一吧，”基说。Amy Chua, the author of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” a 2011 memoir about her hard-driving parenting style, was one of Beaton’s professors at Yale Law School. In recent years she has written more letters of recommendation for him than she can count.在2011年出版的回忆录《虎妈战歌》(Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother)中讲述自己严厉育儿风格的蔡美儿(Amy Chua)是比顿在耶鲁法学院的教授之一。她为他写了无数推荐信。“He can’t stop applying to things,” she said.“他没完没了地申请各种东西，”她说。‘I Want to Work’“我想工作”The making of the boy who wanted to know everything began in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was the only child of a single mother, Paula Beaton. She was pregnant when she and Jamie’s father separated, she said. They later divorced.这个想知道一切的男孩的成长始于新西兰奥克兰，他是单身母亲宝拉·比顿的独生子。她说，她和杰米的父亲分开时她正怀孕。他们后来离婚了。Jamie, who took his mother’s surname, recalled “odd experiences” when he was young, like when his mother joined him for father-son breakfasts at his primary school. But family was important — his maternal grandparents, John and Sarah Beaton, lived with them — and so was education. Jamie’s grandfather, a tradesman, always seemed to be leafing through a newspaper or an Andy McNab thriller.杰米随了母亲的姓，他回忆起小时候的“奇怪经历”，比如母亲参加他小学的父子早餐会。但家庭很重要——他的外祖父母约翰和莎拉·比顿与他们住在一起——教育也很重要。外祖父是一名手艺人，似乎总是在翻阅报纸或安迪·麦克纳布的惊悚小说。“Academics was our religion,” Jamie said.“求学是我们的宗教，”杰米说。His mother said that one of her goals had been to expose her son to myriad opportunities. So he played tennis and basketball. He went camping, swimming, kayaking. He was 9 when his mother introduced him to a chess coach named Glenn Harry Kwok. Kwok and Paula soon began dating and are now long-term partners.他的母亲说，她的目标之一是让儿子接触无数机会。所以他打网球和篮球。他去露营、游泳、划皮划艇。他九岁时，母亲把他介绍给一位名叫格伦·哈里·郭的国际象棋教练。郭和宝拉很快开始约会，现在是长期伴侣。As a teenager, Jamie dreamed of attending a top college in the United States. In his final year of high school, he took more than twice the number of required courses. He was admitted to 25 universities, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton.十几岁时，杰米梦想在美国上顶尖大学。高中最后一年，他选修了所需课程数量的两倍多。他被25所大学录取，包括哈佛、耶鲁和普林斯顿。比顿在曼哈顿。他说自己喜欢“排得满满的一天”。 Charlie Rubin for The New York Times比顿的T恤收藏。 Charlie Rubin for The New York TimesBefore leaving home, he co-founded the counseling service that would become Crimson Education, billing it as a way to help international students navigate their way to U.S. universities. After all, he had done it himself.离家前，他与人创立了后来成为Crimson Education的咨询服务公司，将其宣传为帮助国际学生进入美国大学的一种途径。毕竟，他自己做到了。At Harvard, he felt all alone at first. Then he joined 15 student organizations, including the debate club and the undergraduate economics association. Brett Davis, one of Beaton’s roommates at Harvard, grew accustomed to his 2 a.m. business calls.在哈佛，他起初感到非常孤独。然后他加入了15个学生组织，包括辩论俱乐部和本科生经济学协会。布雷特·戴维斯——比顿在哈佛的室友之一——对他凌晨2点的商务电话习以为常。“That was certainly a clue that this guy was thinking beyond the script of what is normal to do or achieve in college,” Davis said.“这显然能表明，这个人的思考超越了大学里正常要做或实现的事情的剧本，”戴维斯说。Beaton was a sophomore when he emailed Julian Robertson, the founder of Tiger Management, a Wall Street hedge fund. Following a practice he had used with other traders at his firm, Robertson sent him off to be evaluated by a psychoanalyst — “Good fun,” Beaton said — before bringing him aboard.比顿大二时给朱利安·罗伯逊发了邮件，后者是华尔街对冲基金老虎管理公司的创始人。遵循他在公司与其他交易员使用过的做法，罗伯逊让他接受一位精神分析师的评估——“很有趣，”比顿说——然后才让他加入。Between classes at Harvard, Beaton spent two days a week at the Tiger Management offices in New York. Robertson, who died in 2022, and his son Alex, who now runs the firm, became mentors. Tiger Management was an early investor in Crimson Education.在哈佛上课期间，比顿每周有两天会去纽约的老虎管理公司办公室。罗伯逊（2022年去世）以及他的儿子、如今经营该公司的亚历克斯都成了比顿的导师。老虎管理公司还是Crimson Education的早期投资者之一。Alex Robertson recalled urging Beaton to have more work-life balance: Why not spend a week in Cancún with his buddies? “Honestly, Alex,” Beaton told him, “I can’t think of anything worse than sitting on a beach for five days when I want to work.”亚历克斯·罗伯逊回忆说，他曾劝比顿应该更好地平衡工作与生活：为什么不和朋友们去坎昆玩一周呢？“说真的，亚历克斯，”比顿告诉他，“我想不出还有什么事情比我明明想工作，却要在海滩上待五天更糟糕的了。”Beaton was among the dozens of students who took a class on entrepreneurship taught by David Ager, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. Beaton stood out, not only because of his prominent spot in the amphitheater — “In the front, three rows up,” Ager said — but also because he was such an active participant.比顿是数十名选修哈佛商学院高级讲师戴维·阿格教授的创业课程的学生之一。比顿之所以格外引人注意不仅因为他坐在阶梯教室里一个非常显眼的位置——“前排，往上数第三排，”阿格说——还因为他在课堂上非常活跃。“I say this with love,” Ager said, “but I’m sure there was a little bit of frustration that he had to share the time with other people.”“我是带着善意这么说的，”阿杰尔说，“但我敢肯定，他多少会有点不耐烦，因为他不得不和其他人分享课堂时间。”Throughout his journey, Beaton has juggled academics and business. Belkin recalled that he often had his laptop open during class to check work emails or his stock portfolio. “Yet everything came in on time,” Belkin said.一路走来，比顿一直兼顾学业和生意。贝尔金回忆说，他上课时经常打开笔记本电脑查看工作邮件或者自己的股票投资。“但他每次都能按时完成作业，”贝尔金说。Beaton was multitasking in other ways, too, often talking with the student seated next to him, Priscilla Putzer. “There was a lot of whispering and giggling,” Belkin said.比顿还在以其他方式同时处理多件事情，他经常和坐在旁边的学生普里西拉·普策聊天。“他们经常窃窃私语，还咯咯笑个不停，”贝尔金说。Beaton and Putzer were married in April at a ceremony on the beach in Santa Monica, California.比顿和普策于今年4月在加利福尼亚州圣莫尼卡的海滩举行了婚礼。A Company Grows一家公司的成长Crimson Education has not been immune from criticism. Early on, it faced pushback for using aggressive sales tactics and employing many college students as tutors and counselors.对于Crimson Education，也并非没有批评的声音。早期，它因使用咄咄逼人的销售策略以及雇用许多大学生作为导师和顾问而遭到质疑。比顿和妻子普里西拉·比顿。他们是在哥伦比亚大学新闻学院上课时认识的。 Charlie Rubin for The New York TimesAs the company grew, Beaton said, it shifted to employing more full-time counselors — the company now has 1,200 full-time staff members, he said — and hired an accounting firm to vet its numbers. Of the 10,000 students who have used its services, more than 2,000 have been accepted by Ivy League universities, Stanford or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he said.比顿说，随着规模不断壮大，公司逐渐转向聘用更多全职顾问——他说公司现在有1200名全职员工——并聘请了一家会计师事务所对公司的数据进行审核。他说，在使用了其服务的1万名学生中，已有超过2000人被常春藤盟校、斯坦福大学或麻省理工学院录取。The company has also found itself the subject of a broader critique — that its high price tag effectively self-selects students who already have a good chance of getting into elite universities.公司还面临着更广泛的批评：其高昂的收费实际上会自行筛选出那些本来就很有希望进入顶尖大学的学生。Jeff Selingo, a journalist who has written several books about college admissions, said that private counselors can be a helpful resource for those who can afford them. “But it’s not going to get you into a place that you can’t get into otherwise,” he said.杰夫·塞林戈是一名记者，曾撰写过数本关于大学招生的书。他说，对于那些负担得起费用的人来说，私人升学顾问确实可以是有用的资源。“但这不会让你进入一个你本来进不去的地方，”他说。Hamish Coates, an education expert at the Australian National University and Beaton’s thesis adviser at Tsinghua University, praised Beaton as someone who understood “the power of higher education.” But Coates posed a hypothetical: “Do you really want your child to be grooming themselves for the Ivy League from the age of 5, when 95% fail to get in? Or are you better off doing some finger painting, reading ‘Frog and Toad’ and having a good life?”澳大利亚国立大学教育专家、比顿在清华大学的论文导师哈米什·科茨称赞比顿理解“高等教育的力量”。但科茨提出了一个假设性的问题：“你真的希望自己的孩子从五岁起就开始为进入常春藤盟校做准备吗？毕竟95%的人最终都进不去。还是说，你更应该让他们涂涂画画手工、读读《青蛙和蟾蜍》，过快乐的生活？”Beaton has heard that argument before — the “pressure-cooker environment” on one side and the “chill, happy childhood” on the other. He doesn’t buy the premise. “The students who try harder in high school are often the happiest and most engaged,” he said.比顿以前也听过这种说法——一边是“高压锅般的环境”，另一边是“轻松、快乐的童年”。但他并不认同这种前提。“那些在高中阶段更加努力的学生往往也是最快乐、最投入的学生，”他说。His own future appears to be a work in progress. For now, he said, he is focused on “education and entrepreneurship,” along with starting a family. But several of his friends said they could see him entering politics. He has worked with New Zealand’s center-right National Party, which was once headed by Key.至于自己的未来，比顿似乎还没有完全确定。目前，他说自己专注于“教育和创业”，同时也在考虑生子。但他的几位朋友说，他们可以想象他将来进入政界。他曾与新西兰中右翼政党国家党合作，而该党过去曾由约翰·基领导。“If you said to me, ‘In 35 years’ time, Jamie will still be the CEO of Crimson,’ I don’t see it,” Key said. “I think he’s got other, bigger things that he’s going to move on to.”“如果你对我说，‘35年后，杰米仍将是Crimson的首席执行官’，我不信，”基说。“我认为他还有其他更大的事情要去做。”Scott Cacciola 为《纽约时报》风尚版撰写体育和娱乐界人士的专题报道和人物特写。翻译：经雷、杜然点击查看本文英文版。