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.
对于未来的学生可以在就业市场上赚到多少钱，院校提供的信息非常少，一部分原因是院校也许不希望别人知道这些信息，还有部分原因在于收集这些信息并不容易，成本又高。院校擅于联系富有的校友为母校捐款，但赚钱少的校友不仅难于查找，而且这么做的效益也不高。
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. 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.
上周六，美国联邦政府解决了这个问题：他们公布了大量新数据，详细列出了美国几乎所有学院和大学的学生收入。联邦政府没有费心去给院校的质量评级，而是把联邦学生资助体系和联邦纳税申报系统的数据进行了匹配。这样一来，教育部就计算出了在2001年和2002年进入各所院校的学生，在10年后赚了多少钱。
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.
从表面上看，他们发现的趋势并不出人意料——毕业于有钱的名牌大学的学生，收入比其他学生高。但越是深入研究这些数据，就越能清楚地看到，高等教育市场的风险变得何其巨大：学生们做出了代价高昂的重大选择，却并不一定能得到回报。
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.
收入最高的学生来自全国知名的高校，这并不出人意料，包括哈佛大学、麻省理工学院、斯坦福大学，以及其他几所经常排在《美国新闻与世界报道》排行榜前列的大学。最令人不安的数字，来自那些排名远远低于第一梯队的院校。精英教育机构拉高了全国高校毕业生的总体平均收入。尽管大学毕业生的收入仍然远超没有读过大学的人，但在一些院校，学生入学后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. 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.
教育部计算了各所院校年薪超过2.5万美元（约合16万元人民币）的学生比例，2.5万美元是高中毕业生通常的年薪水平。在数百所院校中，只有不到一半的学生在入学10年后，跨过了这道门槛。这些院校包括大量的理发学院、美容学校和营利性院校，它们的学生往往就业前景惨淡，背负了大笔债务。
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，一些比较有名的院校也是如此。在佛蒙特州的本宁顿学院，超过48%的学生在入学10年后，年收入低于2.5万美元，四分之一低于1.06万美元。在安南代尔哈得逊的巴德学院，学生的年收入中位数只有3.57万美元。新墨西哥大学的数字差不多也是一样。
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.
这些数据也显示出，学生们为了换取毕业后的收入借了多少钱。虽然加州大学洛杉矶分校(UCLA)和宾夕法尼亚州立大学都是久负盛名的研究型公立大学，但前者近期毕业的学生所背负的债务，比宾州立少30%，而UCLA早些年毕业的学生，收入约比宾州立高30%。哈佛学生借的钱，不足布兰迪斯大学学生的四分之一，收入却是后者的近两倍。
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.
这些新的联邦收入数据需要经过一段时间才会影响到高校声誉的复杂系统，这样的评价体系仍然主导着高等教育市场。但这个新指标终究会成为人们评价各种大学时，总会参考的一个因素。
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