從美國名牌高校畢業, 你能掙多少錢?

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. 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.

對於未來的學生可以在就業市場上賺到多少錢，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，還有部分原因在於收集這些信息並不容易，成本又高。院校擅於聯繫富有的校友爲母校捐款，但賺錢少的校友不僅難於查找，而且這麼做的效益也不高。

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. 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.

上週六，美國聯邦政府解決了這個問題：他們公佈了大量新數據，詳細列出了美國幾乎所有學院和大學的學生收入。聯邦政府沒有費心去給院校的質量評級，而是把聯邦學生資助體系和聯邦納稅申報系統的數據進行了匹配。這樣一來，教育部就計算出了在2001年和2002年進入各所院校的學生，在10年後賺了多少錢。

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，他們發現的趨勢並不出人意料——畢業於有錢的名牌大學的學生，收入比其他學生高。但越是深入研究這些數據，就越能清楚地看到，高等教育市場的風險變得何其巨大：學生們做出了代價高昂的重大選擇，卻並不一定能得到回報。

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 and World Report college rankings. The most troubling numbers show up far beneath the upper echelons of higher education. 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.

收入最高的學生來自全國知名的高校，這並不出人意料，包括哈佛大學、麻省理工學院、斯坦福大學，以及其他幾所經常排在《美國新聞與世界報道》排行榜前列的大學。最令人不安的數字，來自那些排名遠遠低於第一梯隊的院校。精英教育機構拉高了全國高校畢業生的總體平均收入。儘管大學畢業生的收入仍然遠超沒有讀過大學的人，但在一些院校，學生入學後10年的收入並不高。

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. 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.

教育部計算了各所院校年薪超過2.5萬美元（約合16萬元人民幣）的學生比例，2.5萬美元是高中畢業生通常的年薪水平。在數百所院校中，只有不到一半的學生在入學10年後，跨過了這道門檻。這些院校包括大量的理髮學院、美容學校和營利性院校，它們的學生往往就業前景慘淡，揹負了大筆債務。

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院，超過48%的學生在入學10年後，年收入低於2.5萬美元，四分之一低於1.06萬美元。在安南代爾哈得遜的巴德學院，學生的年收入中位數只有3.57萬美元。新墨西哥大學的數字差不多也是一樣。

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.

這些數據也顯示出，學生們爲了換取畢業後的收入借了多少錢。雖然加州大學洛杉磯分校(UCLA)和賓夕法尼亞州立大學都是久負盛名的研究型公立大學，但前者近期畢業的學生所揹負的債務，比賓州立少30%，而UCLA早些年畢業的學生，收入約比賓州立高30%。哈佛學生借的錢，不足布蘭迪斯大學學生的四分之一，收入卻是後者的近兩倍。

It will take time for the raft of new federal earnings data to seep into the complex reputational ecosystem that continues to govern the higher education market. But this new bottom line will eventually become a permanent aspect of how colleges of all kinds are understood.

這些新的聯邦收入數據需要經過一段時間纔會影響到高校聲譽的複雜系統，這樣的評價體系仍然主導着高等教育市場。但這個新指標終究會成爲人們評價各種大學時，總會參考的一個因素。