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One of Donald Trump’s favourite disruption tricks is to take one true thing and embed it in a welter of lies. Does the global trading system need an overhaul? Yes. Is ruining the US economy and tanking markets the way to do it? No. Should Europeans pay more for their own defence? Yes. Is trashing Nato making Europe safer? No. Is American higher education in need of reform? Yes. Is holding the country’s top colleges hostage the way to fix it? No.
唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)最喜欢的捣乱伎俩之一就是把一件真实的事情掺杂在一堆谎言中。全球贸易体系需要彻底改革吗？需要。毁掉美国经济和让市场失败是解决之道吗？不是。欧洲人应该为自己的国防支付更多费用吗？是的。摧毁北约会让欧洲更安全吗？不是。美国高等教育需要改革吗？是的。挟持美国顶尖高校是解决之道吗？不是。
So, what is? Trump’s war on the Ivy League is both punitive and premeditated. Republicans have complained about “greedy colleges” since at least the 1980s. Late last year, the conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute laid out a plan for how to stamp out university elites who “kowtowed to pro-genocidal campus quad glampers”. Attacks on university funding and attempts to deport campus protesters are part of that goal.
那么，解决之道到底是什么呢？特朗普对常春藤联盟的战争既是惩罚性的，也是有预谋的。至少从20世纪80年代起，共和党人就开始抱怨“贪婪的大学”。去年年底，保守派智库美国企业研究所(American Enterprise Institute)制定了一项计划，是关于如何铲除那些“向支持种族灭绝的校园露营者卑躬屈膝”的大学精英。攻击大学经费、试图驱逐校园抗议者都是这一目标的一部分。
That said, reasonable people — particularly those who went to elite schools or worked at them (I’ve done both) — can and should ask why the academy has come in for such treatment and what can be done to address the flaws in America’s higher education system. There are many, but I’ll point here to three: administrative bloat, cost inflation and toxic credentialism. Fix these problems and colleges will not only stop being such an easy target for conservative ire, they will also work better.
尽管如此，有理智的人——尤其是那些上过名校或在名校工作过的人（我两者都做过）——可以而且应该问一问，为什么院校会受到这样的待遇，以及有什么办法可以解决美国高等教育体系的缺陷。能做的有很多，但我在此只谈三个：行政臃肿、成本膨胀和有毒的证书主义。解决了这些问题，高校不仅不会再轻易成为保守派愤怒的靶子，而且还能更好地运作。
For years now, colleges and universities in the US, both public and private, have been spending more on bureaucracy and less on actual teaching. Since the 1970s, the ratio of faculty to administrators has flipped, in large part because they have become not just places of education but lifestyle centres. College campuses now offer mental health services, intramural sports, entertainment, luxury dorms and gourmet food. Until recently, DEI initiatives proliferated (the latter are now under legal threat following the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action in 2023).
多年来，美国的公立和私立高校在官僚主义上的投入越来越多，而在实际教学上的投入却越来越少。自20世纪70年代以来，教师与行政人员的比例发生了翻天覆地的变化，这在很大程度上是因为大学已不仅仅是教育场所，而是生活方式的中心。现在，大学校园提供心理健康服务、校内体育活动、娱乐活动、豪华宿舍和美食。直到最近，“教育为本”(DEI)倡议才大量涌现（在最高法院于2023年禁止平权行动之后，“教育为本”倡议正面临法律威胁）。
You need more people to run all these things. And while college administrators used to be promoted from inside the academy itself, they are now largely drawn from business schools and professional management programmes. These people are often disconnected from the core mission of teaching and yet their ubiquity and high salaries (often into six-figures) force schools to push up the cost of tuition.
你需要更多的人来管理所有这些事情。过去，高校行政人员都是从学院内部提拔的，而现在他们大多来自商学院和专业管理课程。这些人往往与教学的核心任务脱节，但他们的无处不在和高薪（通常达到六位数）却迫使学校提高学费。
Between 1979 and 2021, the price of a four-year degree tripled, even after accounting for normal inflation. That translates into more teaching being done by lower-paid adjuncts rather than full-time faculty.
从1979年到2021年，即使考虑到正常的通货膨胀，四年制学位的价格也上涨了两倍。这意味着更多的教学工作将由薪酬较低的兼职教师而非全职教师来完成。
If I were running a large university, public or private, I’d start by looking for economies of scale and tech-based job displacement in these sorts of administrative functions, just as efficient companies do. I’d also think carefully about the net effect of bureaucratic bloat on institutional effectiveness if it’s pushing up fees. As a 2024 piece in the Bowdoin Review put it, “that new ‘accessibility co-ordinator’ might just be making your university less accessible to the average tuition paying student.”
如果我经营一所大型大学，无论是公立还是私立，我都会像高效的公司一样，在这些行政职能中寻找规模经济和基于技术的工作替代。我还会仔细考虑官僚膨胀对机构效率的净影响，如果它推高了费用的话。正如《鲍登评论》2024年的一篇文章所说，“新的‘入学无障碍协调员’可能只是让支付普通的学费的学生更难进入你的大学。”
In effect, the expense of America’s higher education system is now out of control. Nobody but the rich can afford a debt-free college education any more. But the solution is not to pull federal funding and throw the ball to the states, as the Trump administration is doing. Not least because that would disproportionately hurt the majority of students who attend public schools and less elite institutions, which tend to have much smaller endowments and depend more on state funding. The latter has been falling in recent years thanks to the tax revolt led by Republican fiscal conservative Grover Norquist and the Koch Brothers.
实际上，美国高等教育系统的开支现已失控。除了富人，再也没有人能在不背负债务的情况下负担得大学教育。但解决的办法并不是像特朗普政府所做的那样，取消联邦拨款，把皮球踢给各个州。尤其是因为这样做会不成比例地伤害到就读于公立学校和不太精英的院校的大多数学生，因为这些学校的捐赠基金往往要少得多，而且更依赖于州政府的资助。近年来，由于共和党财政保守派格罗弗•诺奎斯特(Grover Norquist)和科赫兄弟(Koch Brothers)领导的税收反叛运动，后者的经费一直在下降。
Rather, we should look to bend the cost curve not only by focusing less on fancy extras and the staff to administer them, but by retooling secondary education to include two years of college (the so called “6 in 4” year model which is something that is becoming normal in many states and has backing from many educators and business leaders). For two-thirds of today’s jobs, that level of education would be enough. Meanwhile, it would halve the cost of a traditional state college degree.
相反，我们不仅应该减少对花哨的额外项目和管理这些项目的人员的关注，而且应该重新调整中等教育，使其包括两年的大学教育（即所谓的“六年课程四年完成学制”模式，这种模式在许多州已成为常态，并得到了许多教育工作者和商界领袖的支持），从而降低成本曲线。对于当今三分之二的工作而言，这样的教育水平已经足够。同时，这将使传统州立大学学位的费用减半。
For those who want a full four-year experience, you could imagine universities being a conduit for paid work experiences that fully connect what students are learning with jobs in a way that supports development of real world skills for students and creates a pool of less expensive labour for companies — something that has turned schools like Northeastern in Boston into a global franchise, with campuses in many countries. We might even make a year of mandatory public service part of the college experience, which would go some way towards bridging the political divide in the US.
对于那些希望拥有完整四年学习经历的人来说，你可以想象大学成为带薪工作经历的渠道，将学生所学与工作充分联系起来，这样既能帮助学生发展现实世界中的技能，又能为公司创造一批成本较低的劳动力——这使波士顿东北大学等学校成为一个全球性的特许经营机构，在许多国家都有校区。我们甚至可以将一年的强制性公共服务作为大学生活的一部分，这将在一定程度上弥合美国的政治分歧。
This gets us to the issue of toxic credentialism. Universities used to be a place where people from different class backgrounds and family histories came to level the playing field. But higher education has become a place where differences — political and economic — are then magnified. Half of America’s government and business leaders come from a handful of the elite institutions now under attack by the Trump administration. And the percentage of college graduates coming from the lowest 25 per cent of the income distribution is the same as in the 1970s.
这就引出了有毒的证书主义的问题。大学曾经是一个来自不同阶级背景和家族历史的人来公平竞争的地方。但高等教育已经成为一个政治和经济差异被放大的地方。美国一半的政府和商界领袖来自目前受到特朗普政府攻击的少数精英院校。来自收入分配最低的25%的大学的领袖比例与20世纪70年代相同。
Therein lies the opportunity. For America to grow, higher education must evolve.
机会就在那里。为了美国的发展，高等教育必须发展。