Colleges give prospective students very little information about how much money they can expect to earn in the job market. In part that’s because colleges may not want people to know, and in part it’s because such information is difficult and expensive to gather.

對(duì)于未來(lái)的學(xué)生可以在就業(yè)市場(chǎng)上賺到多少錢(qián)，院校提供的信息非常少，一部分原因是院校也許不希望別人知道這些信息，還有部分原因在于收集這些信息并不容易，成本又高。

Colleges are good at tracking down rich alumni to hit up for donations, but people who make little or no money are harder and less lucrative to find.

院校擅于聯(lián)系富有的校友為母校捐款，但賺錢(qián)少的校友不僅難于查找，而且這么做的效益也不高。

On Saturday, the federal government solved that problem by releasing a huge set of new data detailing the earnings of people who attended nearly every college and university in America. Although it abandonded efforts to rate the quality of colleges, the federal government matched data from the federal student financial aid system to federal tax returns.

上周六，美國(guó)聯(lián)邦政府解決了這個(gè)問(wèn)題：他們公布了大量新數(shù)據(jù)，詳細(xì)列出了美國(guó)幾乎所有學(xué)院和大學(xué)的學(xué)生收入。聯(lián)邦政府沒(méi)有費(fèi)心去給院校的質(zhì)量評(píng)級(jí)，而是把聯(lián)邦學(xué)生資助體系和聯(lián)邦納稅申報(bào)系統(tǒng)的數(shù)據(jù)進(jìn)行了匹配。

The Department of Education was thus able to calculate how much money people who enrolled in individual colleges in 2001 and 2002 were earning 10 years later.

這樣一來(lái)，教育部就計(jì)算出了在2001年和2002年進(jìn)入各所院校的學(xué)生，在10年后賺了多少錢(qián)。

On the surface, the trends aren’t surprising — students who enroll in wealthy, elite colleges earn more than those who do not. But the deeper that you delve into the data, the more clear it becomes how perilous the higher education market can be for students making expensive, important choices that don’t always pay off.

從表面上看，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)的趨勢(shì)并不出人意料——畢業(yè)于有錢(qián)的名牌大學(xué)的學(xué)生，收入比其他學(xué)生高。但越是深入研究這些數(shù)據(jù)，就越能清楚地看到，高等教育市場(chǎng)的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)變得何其巨大：學(xué)生們做出了代價(jià)高昂的重大選擇，卻并不一定能得到回報(bào)。

The national universities producing the top earners are no surprise: Harvard, M.I.T., Stanford and others that routinely top the annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings. The most troubling numbers show up far beneath the upper echelons of higher education.

收入最高的學(xué)生來(lái)自全國(guó)知名的高校，這并不出人意料，包括哈佛大學(xué)、麻省理工學(xué)院、斯坦福大學(xué)，以及其他幾所經(jīng)常排在《美國(guó)新聞與世界報(bào)道》(U.S. News & World Report)排行榜前列的大學(xué)。最令人不安的數(shù)字，來(lái)自那些排名遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)低于第一梯隊(duì)的院校。

Elite institutions prop up the overall average earnings of college graduates nationwide. Although earnings of college graduates continue to outpace those of non-collegians by a significant margin, at some institutions, the earnings of students 10 years after enrollment are bleak.

精英教育機(jī)構(gòu)拉高了全國(guó)高校畢業(yè)生的總體平均收入。盡管大學(xué)畢業(yè)生的收入仍然遠(yuǎn)超沒(méi)有讀過(guò)大學(xué)的人，但在一些院校，學(xué)生入學(xué)后10年的收入并不高。

The Department of Education calculated the percentage of students at each college who earned more than $25,000 per year, which is about what high school graduates earn. At hundreds of colleges, less than half of students met this threshold 10 years after enrolling.

教育部計(jì)算了各所院校年薪超過(guò)2.5萬(wàn)美元（約合16萬(wàn)元人民幣）的學(xué)生比例，2.5萬(wàn)美元是高中畢業(yè)生通常的年薪水平。在數(shù)百所院校中，只有不到一半的學(xué)生在入學(xué)10年后，跨過(guò)了這道門(mén)檻。

The list includes a raft of barber academies, cosmetology schools and for-profit colleges that often leave students with few job prospects and mountains of debt.

這些院校包括大量的理發(fā)學(xué)院、美容學(xué)校和營(yíng)利性院校，它們的學(xué)生往往就業(yè)前景慘淡，背負(fù)了大筆債務(wù)。

But some more well-known institutions weren’t far behind. At Bennington College in Vermont, over 48 percent of former students were earning less than $25,000 per year. A quarter were earning less than $10,600 per year. At Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, the median annual earnings were only $35,700. Results at the University of New Mexico were almost exactly the same.

但是，一些比較有名的院校也是如此。在佛蒙特州的本寧頓學(xué)院(Bennington College)，超過(guò)48%的學(xué)生在入學(xué)10年后，年收入低于2.5萬(wàn)美元，四分之一低于1.06萬(wàn)美元。在安南代爾哈得遜的巴德學(xué)院(Bard College)，學(xué)生的年收入中位數(shù)只有3.57萬(wàn)美元。新墨西哥大學(xué)(University of New Mexico)的數(shù)字差不多也是一樣。

The data reveals how much money students are borrowing in exchange for earnings after graduation. While U.C.L.A. and Penn State are both prestigious public research universities, recent U.C.L.A. grads leave with about 30 percent less debt, even as their predecessors are earning about 30 percent more money than counterparts at Penn State. Harvard students borrow barely a quarter of what Brandeis students take on, and earn nearly twice as much.

這些數(shù)據(jù)也顯示出，學(xué)生們?yōu)榱藫Q取畢業(yè)后的收入借了多少錢(qián)。雖然加州大學(xué)洛杉磯分校(UCLA)和賓夕法尼亞州立大學(xué)(Penn State)都是久負(fù)盛名的研究型公立大學(xué)，但前者近期畢業(yè)的學(xué)生所背負(fù)的債務(wù)，比賓州立少30%，而UCLA早些年畢業(yè)的學(xué)生，收入約比賓州立高30%。哈佛學(xué)生借的錢(qián)，不足布蘭迪斯大學(xué)學(xué)生的四分之一，收入?yún)s是后者的近兩倍。

The return is unequal in other ways. There is an earnings gender gap at every top university. The size of the difference varies a great deal. At Duke, for example, women earned $93,100 per year on average, compared with $123,000 for men, a difference of $29,900.

從其他方面來(lái)看，收入并不均衡。每一所頂級(jí)高校在收入方面都存在性別差異。差異的大小相差懸殊。例如，在杜克大學(xué)，女性平均年收入9.31萬(wàn)美元，而男性的薪水為12.3萬(wàn)美元，兩者相差2.99萬(wàn)美元。

At Princeton, men earned more and women earned less, for a difference of $47,700. Women who enrolled at Cornell earned more than women who enrolled at Yale.

在普林斯頓大學(xué)，男性?huà)甑酶啵話(huà)甑酶?，差距達(dá)到了4.77萬(wàn)美元。康奈爾大學(xué)的女畢業(yè)生比耶魯大學(xué)的女畢業(yè)生掙得多。

Defining higher education in purely economic terms risks exacerbating what some have described as the corporatization of the modern university. People get a lot more out of college than earnings potential. They learn to be better citizens and better human beings.

單從經(jīng)濟(jì)角度定義高等教育，可能會(huì)加劇一些人所說(shuō)的現(xiàn)代大學(xué)的公司化的情況。人們?cè)诖髮W(xué)里得到的，遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)不僅是收入前景。他們還會(huì)學(xué)到怎樣做一個(gè)更好的公民、更好的人。

The world needs dancers and poets along with the future investment bankers and tech entrepreneurs streaming out of elite schools.

世界需要精英學(xué)校涌現(xiàn)出的舞者、詩(shī)人，也需要未來(lái)的投資銀行家和科技創(chuàng)業(yè)者。

The problem is that the dancers and poets are paying the same, ever-rising tuition, even though the necessary cost of running a good poetry program is probably not much more than it was in earlier times when college tuition was much less expensive than it is today. And you can’t pay your student loans back with citizenship — only dollars will do.

問(wèn)題在于舞者和詩(shī)人需要支付的學(xué)費(fèi)與其他人一樣多，而且在不斷上漲，雖然開(kāi)設(shè)一個(gè)好的詩(shī)歌項(xiàng)目所必需成本，可能并不比以前多很多，而當(dāng)時(shí)大學(xué)學(xué)費(fèi)要低得多。你不能用公民責(zé)任感來(lái)償還助學(xué)貸款——只有錢(qián)才行。

Colleges can ameliorate this problem by providing need-based financial aid to low-income students, reducing their debt burden and likelihood of loan default. The new data indicates that some colleges are more successful with this strategy than others.

大學(xué)可以通過(guò)為低收入學(xué)生按需提供經(jīng)濟(jì)支持，來(lái)減少他們的債務(wù)負(fù)擔(dān)和拖欠貸款的可能性，進(jìn)而幫助改善這個(gè)問(wèn)題。新的數(shù)據(jù)顯示，一些采取這種策略的大學(xué)，要比其他大學(xué)成功。

（內(nèi)容來(lái)自 紐約時(shí)報(bào)中英文網(wǎng)）