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What are the roads not taken because students must take out loans for college? A collection of studies shows that the burden of student debt may well cause people to make different decisions than they would otherwise — affecting not just individual lives but also the entire economy.
一些学生由于不得不举债上大学，他们未来所选择的道路会有什么不同吗？一系列研究表明，学生贷款的压力很可能会促使人们做出与没有贷款压力时不同的决定——这不仅会影响个人生活，而且还会影响整个经济。
For one thing, it appears that people with student loans are less likely to start businesses of their own. A new study has found that areas with higher relative growth in student debt show lower growth in the formation of small businesses (in this case, firms with one to four employees).
首先，似乎背负学生贷款的人自己创业的可能性较小。一项新研究发现，在学生贷款增长率相对较高的地区，小公司（这里指拥有1到4名雇员的公司）的创办率较低。
The correlation makes sense. People normally have only a certain amount of "debt capacity," said Brent W. Ambrose, a professor of risk management at Pennsylvania State University and a co-author of a preliminary paper on the research along with Larry Cordell and Shuwei Ma of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
这种相关性有一定的道理。人们通常只有一定的“借债能力”，宾夕法尼亚州立大学(Pennsylvania State University)风险管理教授布伦特·W·安布罗斯(Brent W. Ambrose)说。他与费城联邦储备银行(Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)的拉里·科德尔(Larry Cordell)和马书伟（音译）做过一项研究，而且还是该研究的一篇初期论文的作者之一。
When students use up their debt capacity on student loans, they can't commit it elsewhere. "Given the importance of an entrepreneur's personal debt capacity in financing a start-up business, student loan debt, which cannot be discharged via bankruptcy, can have lasting effects later in life and may impact the ability of future small-business owners to raise capital," the study says.
如果学生在学生贷款上用完了自己的借债能力，他们就无法再去别处借债了。研究表示，“由于需要为初创公司融资，企业家的个人借债能力很重要，而无法通过破产来免除的学生贷款可能会对债务人今后的生活产生持续影响，可能还会影响未来的小型企业业主筹集资金的能力。”
Considering that 60 percent of jobs are created by small business, "if you shut down the ability to create new businesses, you're going to harm the economy," Professor Ambrose said.
由于60%的就业岗位都是小型企业创造的，安布罗斯说，“如果扼杀了人们的创业能力，就会给经济带来损伤。”
Student loan debt also appears to be affecting homeownership trends. According to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, fewer 30-year-olds in general have bought homes since the recession, but the decline has been steeper for people with a history of student loan debt and has continued even as the housing market has recovered.
学生贷款似乎还会影响私人购房趋势。根据纽约联邦储备银行的研究，自经济衰退以来，30岁人群的购房率普遍降低，但是对于有学生贷款历史的人群而言，购房率的降低更为严重，而且甚至在房产市场恢复后，这种情况仍在继续。
Total student loans outstanding have risen to $1.1 trillion, compared with $300 billion just a decade ago, according to the Fed's study. The average total debt for student borrowers was around $30,000 in 2013. No wonder borrowers have been reluctant to start businesses or to buy homes.
目前，学生未偿贷款总额已增至1.1万亿美元（约合6.8万亿元人民币），而10年前，这个数字仅为3000亿美元。2013年，学生借款人的平均债务总额在3万美元左右。难怪借款人不愿意创业或购房。
Student loan debt may also affect career choices. Having a college loan appears to reduce the likelihood that people will choose a low-paying public-interest job, according to a 2011 study by Jesse Rothstein of the University of California, Berkeley, and Cecilia Elena Rouse of Princeton.
学生贷款或许还会对职业选择造成影响。加州大学伯克利分校(University of California, Berkeley)的杰西·罗思坦(Jesse Rothstein)和普林斯顿大学(Princeton)的塞西莉亚·埃琳娜·劳斯(Cecilia Elena Rouse)2011年的一项研究表明，如果背负着学生贷款，人们选择低报酬的公益工作的可能性似乎就会降低。
They arrived at their conclusion by studying a well-off university that began meeting students' financial needs through a combination of work-study money and grants, and dispensing with loans altogether. (The school insisted on anonymity as a condition for participating in the study.)
他们的结论来自对一所资金雄厚的大学的研究。通过半工半读的报酬和补助金，以及全面免用贷款，这所富裕大学开始满足学生的经济需求。（作为参与研究的条件，这所学校要求匿名。)
Before the new policy started in the early 2000s, students were more likely to choose well-paid professions like investment banking and consulting, Professor Rothstein said in an interview. After the policy took effect, more students chose jobs in areas like teaching and the nonprofit sector.
这项举措于21世纪头10年初期开始实施。在它实施以前，学生更倾向于选择投资银行和咨询等报酬丰厚的职业，罗思坦在采访中说。该举措生效后，越来越多的学生选择了教学和非盈利性质的工作。
In many cases, the choices that student borrowers make are just common sense, based on the financial realities they face. Taken together, they seem to be having a substantive — many would say negative — effect on the economy.
在许多情况下，学生借款人所做的选择只是人之常情，是根据他们所面对的现实经济状况做出的决定。总体来看，这些选择似乎对经济产生了重大——许多人会说是负面的影响。
Is that enough reason for schools or the government to step in with a solution? Not many schools are like Anon U (as the researchers above called it), which could afford to take loans off the table. If society wants to change the skewing effect of student loans, some tough decisions about allocating educational resources may well lie ahead.
这个理由足以让学校或政府拿出一个解决方案吗？没有很多学校像Anon U大学（前述研究者对这所学校的称呼）一样有能力免用贷款。如果社会希望改变学生贷款所带来的扭曲性影响，有关部门就应该立即做出一些关于教育资源分配的困难抉择。
