为了读好大学而倾家荡产，这样划算吗？

Measuring College Prestige vs. Cost of Enrollment
为了读好大学而倾家荡产，这样划算吗？

Having a choice is generally a good thing, and being able to choose among several college acceptances should be a wonderful thing indeed.

有选择通常是好事，而能够同时被几所大学录取并从中挑选最中意的一所，应该算是幸福的事了。

But let’s face it: the cost of a college education these days ranges from expensive to obscenely expensive. So the decision is likely to be tougher and more emotional than most parents and children imagined as they weigh offers from colleges that have given real financial aid against others that are offering just loans.

但我们还是面对现实吧：目前大学教育的费用只有贵和贵得荒唐之分。因此，当家长和孩子们在权衡那些提供实实在在的助学金的大学和其他只有学生贷款的大学时，他们的选择很可能比大多数人之前想象的更困难，更情绪化。

While some students will be able to go to college only if they receive financial aid and others have the resources to go wherever they want, most fall into a middle group that has to answer this question: Do they try to pay for a college that gave them little financial aid, even if it requires borrowing money or using up their savings, because it is perceived to be better, or do they opt for a less prestigious college that offered a merit scholarship and would require little, if any borrowing? It’s not an easy decision.

虽然有些学生没有助学金就上不起大学，还有些人有财力去读任何一所大学，然而大部分学生还是属于中间档，他们必须回答的问题是：去读一所让人觉得更优秀但只提供很少助学金的大学还是选择一个不那么有名但提供优秀学生奖学金的大学？选择前者，他们要承担大部分费用，可能还要去借钱或花光积蓄；选择后者，即使要借钱，也只要借很少。这样的选择并不容易。

“It’s not just the sticker price and the net costs,” said Sarah Turner, professor of economics and education at the University of Virginia. She added, “How likely is it that you will get into medical school or law school or have some other opportunities” if you choose the more prestigious college?

“这可不单单是标价和净成本之间的权衡，”弗吉尼亚大学(University of Virginia)经济和教育学教授萨拉·特纳(Sarah Turner)说。她进一步追问，如果你选择更有声望的大学，那么“你能进入它们的医学院或法学院，或得到一些其他机会的可能性有多大？”

That’s the rational argument. In these decisions, though, emotion often wins out, and it can lead to the slippery slope of excessive borrowing.

这个论点很有道理。不过，在做这些决定时，最后取胜的往往是情感因素，并导致人们陷入过度借贷的恶性循环。

“Families really need to look realistically at what they can afford,” said Lynn O’Shaughnessy, author of “The College Solution” and a blog of the same name. “Sometimes, they’ll look at a package and say, ‘It’s not enough, but we can sacrifice and send our children to the school they really want to go to.’ They have to realize this a four- to five-year commitment.”

“家庭真的应该现实地看待他们到底承担得起多少费用，”林恩·奥肖尼西(Lynn O’Shaughnessy)是《读大学的方案》(The College Solution)一书作者，同时还开设了一个同名博客，她说：“有时候，家长看着一个学费方案会说，‘这个不够好，不过我们可以做些牺牲，把孩子送到他们真正想去的学校。’但他们真的应该好好斟酌，因为这是一个长达四年，甚至五年的承诺。”

Ms. O’Shaughnessy said she was trying to counsel a father in New Jersey who was on the verge of making a horrendous financial decision. His daughter had received a full scholarship to attend Rutgers University but her first choice was New York University, which, even with financial aid, would cost the family $32,000 a year. The father, an engineer who was also out of work, said he was going to send her to N.Y.U.

奥肖尼西女士说，她试图劝告过新泽西一位处在做出可怕财务决定边缘的父亲。他女儿得到了罗格斯大学(Rutgers University)的全额奖学金，但她的第一志愿是纽约大学(New York University)，但去后者即使能拿到助学金，每年也要花掉他们3.2万美元。这位做工程师的父亲已经失业，可他还是说要把女儿送到纽约大学。

“I can’t even believe he’s considering it,” she said. “I was floored. It’s irrational.”

“我简直不敢相信他会考虑这样做，”她说，“这个决定太让我震惊，这太不理智了。”

But, unfortunately, that father is not so unusual. While it is hard not to give our children what they want, here are some ideas on how to think about this financial dilemma without going broke — or at least know why you will be broke.

但不幸的是，那位父亲和许多其他家长一样，选择了为孩子做出牺牲。虽然家长们很难做到不去满足孩子的愿望，但在这里我们可以提供一些思路，谈谈怎样在不用破产，或者至少能明白你为什么会破产的情况下，去考虑这一财务上的两难抉择。

The competition to get into top colleges is fierce in many cities and towns in America, but nowhere is it more so that at the country’s elite institutions. And many parents feel compelled to reward all that hard work.

在美国的许多城镇，进入一流大学的竞争极其激烈，但在如今的美国精英学校里更是如此。并且，许多家长会不由自主地觉得应该奖励孩子们所有的艰辛努力。

The debate between paying full tuition at an elite institution or accepting a merit scholarship from someplace less prestigious “is a conversation we have all the time,” said James Conroy, chairman of post-high-school counseling at New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Ill., an affluent suburb in Chicago. “It’s a tough conversation because what it gets down to is the values of the family.”

支付全额学费去精英学校，还是接受优秀学生奖学金去不那么有名的学校，围绕这两者之间的辩论“是我们长久以来的论题，”新特里尔乡立中学(New Trier Township High School)高等教育咨询处主任詹姆斯·康罗伊(James Conroy)说。“因为关系到家庭的价值观，所以这个对话很困难。”该校位于伊利诺伊州温尼特卡，这是芝加哥的一个富裕郊区。

But he said many parents did not realize that their children were going up against other children who were identical to them — at least on paper. “There are 100 schools that we talk about in this office day after day after day,” he said. “But those are the same schools that every New Trier across the country talks about.”

但他说，许多家长没有意识到的是，与他们的子女一起竞争的是和他们相同的孩子——至少在名义上是相同的。“在这个办公室，我们日复一日地谈论着100所高校，”他说，“但全国每个中学里谈论的都是那些相同的学校。”

Prestige has always been part of the equation, but he said he had expected parents to start looking for value in colleges after the 2008 financial collapse. Instead, parents have come to see the elite universities as the only way to give their children a chance at success. They feel jobs are hard to come by and companies are only going to look to hire at the elite universities.

大学的声望一直是这项权衡里的一个因素，但他说，他曾期望2008年全球金融危机后家长们能开始探寻大学的价值。相反，家长们变得把读精英大学看作是唯一一个给孩子成功机会的方式。他们觉得找到工作很难，而且企业只会到一流大学里招募员工。

“Whether it’s true or not, I have no evidence,” he said. “But that was what was out on the bongo drums in the community.”

“我没有证据证明这种情况是否属实，”他说，“但在街谈巷议中，这种说法十分流行。”

Ms. O’Shaughnessy knows this thinking well. The New Jersey father she described has many contemporaries willing to try to pay for something they could not afford. And there’s no guarantee, she said, that N.Y.U. will bring his daughter greater success.

奥肖尼西女士非常了解这种想法。有许多人和她描述的那位新泽西的父亲一样，他们愿意努力支付自己承担不起的东西。而且，她说，纽约大学是否会给他女儿带来更大的成功并没有保证。

“Frankly, I think that’s why East Coast schools that aren’t in the top tier but are in cities can get away with charging outrageous amounts of money and giving mediocre financial aid packages,” Ms. O’Shaughnessy said. “Students fall in love with these schools, and there are parents who are willing to sacrifice beyond all rational reasoning.”

“老实说，我认为这就是为什么虽然不在顶尖学校之列，但是由于建在城市里，东海岸学校能够收费离谱且只提供中等水平助学金而免受指责，”奥肖尼西女士说。“学生们爱上这些学校，家长们愿意不顾一切理性做出牺牲。”

But economists are not sure this trade-off is worth it. In two much-discussed studies about the value of a degree from an elite college — one with people who graduated in the 1970s and the other with more recent graduates — Alan B. Krueger, then an economist at Princeton University, and Stacy Berg Dale, a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, found that equally smart students had about the same earnings whether or not they went to top-tier colleges. The big difference, their studies found, came from minority and low-income students who went to top-tier colleges: They did better later on.

但经济学家们并不确定这种取舍是否值得。在关于精英学校学位价值的研究中，有两项研究最常被提起——一个针对20世纪70年代的毕业生，另一个研究针对最近毕业的学生，它们的发起者分别是普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)当时的经济学家艾伦·克鲁格(Alan B. Krueger)和Mathematica政策研究公司高级研究员史黛西·博格·黛尔(Stacy Berg Dale)。两项研究均发现，聪明程度相当的学生，无论是否去一流大学就读，他们的收入大致相同。他们研究发现，因上一流大学而带来较大差异的是少数族裔和低收入学生：他们往后的发展更好。

Lawrence Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard University, said he could envision circumstances where there might be a benefit to attending the more elite institution, but he could see more instances when paying to go to a large, nonelite university was a waste of money.

哈佛大学经济学教授劳伦斯·卡茨(Lawrence Katz)说，他能想象出入读名校而获益的情形，但他能看到更多的例子是，花钱上一所大而无名的学校完全是浪费钱。

“The difference between going to Swarthmore and Penn State is greater today than it was in 1976 because there are higher returns to all upper-end skills and connections,” he said. By contrast, a larger, private, expensive nonelite university was not necessarily better than “the flagship campus of a top-notch state university.”

“由于高端技能和人脉如今有着更高的回报，斯沃斯莫尔学院(Swarthmore)和宾州州立大学(Penn State)之间的差别在今天比在1976年更大，”他说。相比之下，更大却昂贵的私立非精英大学未必比“一流州立大学的旗舰校园”更好。

For parents willing to pay more for that nonelite, private university, Professor Katz said they should not think about it as an investment but as a form of consumption. “If your kid is dead set on it, you can splurge on it,” he said. “But you should view it like a wedding or a vacation. There are plenty of things that you can do that make your life better if you’re upper middle class, and that’s fine.”

卡茨教授说，对于愿意给那些私立非精英大学付更多钱的家长，他们不应该把这想成投资，而应把它当作某种形式的消费。“如果你的孩子死心塌地想要上那所学校，你可以去挥霍，”他说。“但你应该把这看作是一场婚礼或一次度假。如果你是中上阶层，要让生活更美好，有的是可以做的事，这无可厚非。”

This spending becomes problematic, of course, when parents cannot really afford to pay and, worse, Professor Turner said, when students borrow heavily without thinking about the kind of life they want after graduation.

特纳教授说，当然，在父母亲不能真正承担起这笔费用时，这样的开支就开始变得有问题了，当学生们大量借款却没有考虑过毕业后想过什么样的生活时，就更糟了。

“Am I certain I’m going to end up on Wall Street?” she said. “If you know that’s what you want to do, borrow and go to N.Y.U. But borrowing does not make a lot of sense if you want to go to culinary school.”

“我能确定自己最后能在华尔街谋得一份差事吗？”她说。“如果你清楚自己想要做什么，那么借钱去读纽约大学。但如果你想读的是厨师学校，还要借钱去读就讲不通了。”

In most cases, though, the decision is what Professor Turner called, “a choice under uncertainty”: few high school seniors really know what they want to do and, by extension, what they will earn.

但是在许多时候，这样的决定就像特纳教授所说的，是“一个在不确定情况下做出的决定”：极少数中学毕业生真的知道他们想要做什么，进一步说，他们能赚到什么。

Parents and their children trying to make the decision now need to be honest with themselves, Ms. O’Shaughnessy said.

奥肖尼西女士说，需要做出决定的家长和他们的孩子应当对自己诚实。

If they decide to pay more than they can afford for the coming school year, they need to remember that they’re looking at a four-year expense and that given increasing tuition, the total cost will be more than four times the cost of freshman year. “If you have a smart student who can get into some of these expensive schools, they’ll do well in other places,” she said.

如果他们决定在即将到来的学年里承担超过自己能力的费用，他们应当记住，这样的开支将持续四年。而且，鉴于学费不断增长，总的费用将不止是第一年学费乘以四。“如果你的孩子能够考上那些昂贵的学校，他们在其他学校也会学得很好，”她说。

Parents and students also need to look at the graduation rates of the colleges they’re considering. While taking on a lot of debt is not good, taking on a lot of debt and not graduating from college is even worse.

家长和学生也应当看一下他们正在考虑的大学的毕业率。虽然负债太多并不好，但背了这么多债却不能毕业更糟糕。

And if the students received any merit scholarships, they should consider them. They are a sign that a college really wants the student.

而且如果学生已经拿到了优秀学生奖学金，他们应该考虑提供奖学金的这些学校，因为这表明某所学校确实想收这位学生。

For parents who will be in this situation in a few years, you could do worse than take a page from the playbook of James Montague, director of guidance and support services at Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in the United States and one that selects students based on exams and grades.

对那些将在几年内面临这种情况的家长，听听波士顿拉丁学校(Boston Latin School)的指导和支持服务处主任詹姆斯·蒙塔古(James Montague)的建议是个不错的方法。波士顿拉丁学校是美国第一所公立学校，并且它把考试和成绩作为录取学生的标准。

Mr. Montague said his students, a third of whom are on subsidized lunch programs, do not often have the options of their peers at wealthy suburban schools. Their parents are not going to be able to find or borrow $30,000 a year for four years.

蒙塔古说，他的学生中有三分之一参加了午餐补贴计划，他们不像那些在昂贵的郊区学校上学的同龄人一样经常有选择。他们的父母并没有能力在四年时间里每年都能拿出或借到3万美元。

To prevent disappointment — or to force the students who want to be bakers to go to work on Wall Street to pay back their loans — he said he encouraged students to apply to at least one state college that would give them merit aid and to stick to the federally subsidized loan limits.

为了避免失望，不让那些想要当面包师的学生为了还清贷款而被迫去华尔街工作，他说他鼓励学生们至少申请一所能给他们提供优秀学生奖学金的州立大学，并且借贷不要超过联邦助学贷款的上限。

“Our students are reasonable about this,” he said, adding, “Our students are very resilient. They’re going to make it work.”

“我们的学生对此很理性，”他说，“我们的学生富有韧性，他们能够做到。”

And ultimately, that will be what determines success long after a college is chosen.

最终，在选定大学很久之后，决定成功的是坚韧不拔的品格。