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标题：Higher Expectations

更高的期望

来源：April 8, The Economist

《经济学人》4月8日

正文

Higher Expectations

更高的期望

Students are veering away from dodgy degrees. Governments should help them

学生们正在远离有问题的学位，政府应该帮助他们

It is fashionable to be gloomy about the costs and benefits of a degree. In America a majority of people now tell pollsters that they think going to university is not worth it. For the average undergraduate that is far from the truth. In rich countries people who hold a bachelor’s degree earn over 40% more than those who do not. This premium has remained lofty, even as the number of university-goers has soared: some 33m people are studying undergraduate degrees across the rich world today.

对学位的成本和收益持悲观态度是一种时尚。在美国，现在大多数人告诉民意测验调查员，他们认为上大学不值得。对于普通本科生来说，这远非事实。在富裕国家，拥有学士学位的人比没有学位的人多赚40%以上。尽管大学生的数量飙升，但这种溢价仍然很高：如今全球富裕国家有约3300万人正在攻读本科学位。

Yet those average figures hide queasily large differences. For a shocking share of students, the returns from attending university are puny. About 25% of men and 15% of women graduates in England would have been better off financially had they not bothered. In total, student debt has reached $1.6trn in America, 60% more than is owed on credit cards. Low earnings help explain why about a fifth of America’s student borrowers were in default before the pandemic.

然而，这些平均数据掩盖了令人不安的巨大差异。对于相当多的学生来说，上大学的回报微不足道。在英格兰，约25%的男性和15%的女性毕业生，如果没有上大学，他们的财务状况会更好。在美国，学生债务总计已达到1.6万亿美元，比信用卡债务高出60%。低收入是美国约五分之一的学生借款人在疫情爆发前违约的原因之一。

Those who do worst out of higher education attend shoddy institutions, are badly prepared, give up, or choose subjects that lead to low wages. Many who do complete their courses are loaded with debt and equipped with a degree of peripheral relevance that has been taught badly. They are being ripped off, not prepared for a better life.

那些在高等教育中表现最差的人，通常是去了劣质大学、没有得到良好的准备、中途辍学或选择了薪资较低的学科。许多完成课程的人背负着债务，并且所获得的相关学位质量很差。他们被割了韭菜，没有能力给自己提供更好的生活。

The good news is that young people are voting with their feet. A dramatic shift is taking place as students switch to subjects that are linked to better earnings. In America, for example, the numbers enrolled in computer science have more than doubled in a decade. Those studying English and history, subjects that are less likely to raise wages, have fallen by about a quarter. Some universities have begun to cull courses.

好消息是，年轻人正在用脚投票（以退场表示反对）。学生正在大量转向与更高收入相关的科目。例如，在美国，计算机科学专业的注册人数在十年内增长了一倍以上，而英语和历史等薪资较低的学科的学生数量则下降了约四分之一。一些大学已经开始削减课程。

Governments should seek to accelerate this adjustment in the higher-education marketplace. But all too often their instinct is to throw money at the problem. President Joe Biden wants America’s Supreme Court to approve his plan to forgive a large chunk of the country’s student debts, as a one–off. He also hopes to tweak the rules on repayment, which will make the federal loan system a bit more generous. Together these changes could cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

政府应寻求加快高等教育市场的这种调整。但他们的本能往往是砸钱来解决问题。乔·拜登总统希望美国最高法院批准他的计划，一次性免除美国大部分学生债务。他还希望调整还款规则，这将使联邦贷款系统更加慷慨。这些变化加在一起可能在未来十年花费数千亿美元。

The danger is that they will make America’s students less discerning about how much they borrow and what they use the money for. Without a disciplining mechanism, pricey universities will be even more inclined to raise their fees.

危险在于，他们将使美国的学生更不清楚他们借了多少钱，他们把钱用在了什么地方。如果没有约束机制，昂贵的大学将更倾向于提高学费。

A better alternative would be for governments to invest in giving students the information they need to make sensible choices. Britain has pulled together detailed data about how much graduates from thousands of courses at hundreds of institutions go on to earn, but it does a poor job of supplying this to all applicants. America has been working on something similar, but laws that limit federal data–crunching are getting in the way.

一个更好的选择是政府投资为学生提供他们需要的信息，以帮助他们做出明智的选择。英国收集了有关数百所院校数千门课程的毕业生收入的详细数据，但没能有效地向所有申请人提供这些数据。美国也在做类似的事情，但由于受到法律对联邦数据分析的限制，这一进程受到阻碍。

Some youngsters, often the better–off ones, are already making good use of data. Supplying it to everyone else should be a priority. Modest spending on career counselling in secondary schools could help reduce the billions spent on writing off student loans down the line.

一些年轻人，通常是家境较好的，已经在很好地利用数据。把它提供给其他所有人应该是当务之急。中学在职业咨询上的适度支出，可能有助于节约今后用于撤销学生贷款的数十亿美元。

Governments should also be fussier about which courses their cash helps pay for. Programmes at all levels that wish to benefit from state funds should have to clear a basic quality hurdle—for example, that a majority of the students who enroll in them eventually end up earning more than high-school graduates. Mr Biden would like a limited rule of this kind to come to America. But a decade has passed since such talk began.

政府也应该对他们的现金帮助支付的课程更加挑剔。希望从国家资金中获益的各级项目必须达到一个基本的质量标准——例如，大多数参加这些项目的学生最终会比高中毕业生挣得多。拜登先生希望这种有限的规则能够在美国实现。但自此类对话开始以来，已经过去了10年，我们什么也没看到。

Some universities and colleges resist these kinds of safeguards. They argue that trying to weed out poor–value courses and to focus government lending will compromise the pursuit of knowledge and penalise poor families and minorities by limiting what they can study. However, the real problem is that the status quo is leading too many people to pursue shoddy but expensive degrees. The goal should be an education system that steadily adapts to the shifting preferences of society and the demands of the labour market—and one that has a low tolerance for degree courses that fail young people.

这些措施遭到一些大学和学院的抵制。他们认为，试图淘汰低价值课程，并集中政府贷款，将损害人们对知识的追求，并限制贫困家庭和少数族裔的学习，使他们处于严重不利地位。然而，真正的问题在于现状导致太多人追求质量低劣但昂贵的学位。目标应该是一个教育体系，不断适应社会的不断变化的偏好和劳动力市场的需求，对那些对年轻人无益的学位课程具有低容忍度。