作者/ Chris Klundt
編譯/李育嘉
[tabs]
[tab title=”中文”]
美國名校值得你花這麼多錢嘛？
大學教育的價值是什麼？通常人們的回答，都是為了學習而學習，以及職業訓練，然而，認為一張25萬美元的耶魯畢業證書就能找到好工作的想法已逐漸煙消雲散。(註1)
常春藤盟校這星期寄出了入學通知書，數千名學生迫不及待想知道他們是否獲得這僅僅只有6%至14%的錄取機會。然而，以盟校成員之一的哈佛大學為例，伴隨錄取喜悅而來的是每年高達69,600美元的學費。每位學生平均貸款近30,000美元，然而畢業生失業率卻高居8.5%。
由於這些數據，上大學的目的漸漸地受到質疑。華爾街日報近來指出，學貸壓力和萎靡的就業市場迫使學生早早敲定主修科目，如醫療衛生或法律等『實用』系所。北卡羅來納大學的英文教授也指出，以就業為導向的高等教育觀念日趨高漲。為了應對此一趨勢，已有教育機構提出全新的大學教育理念：『培養深度思考能力，思考乃人生最大的樂趣，也能展現全人的意義。』
文化修養不容忽視，但以該理由為選擇科系的依據是很奢侈的想法。高漲的學費已超過許多家庭可負擔的範圍，是該慎重思考學位的實質效益。高等教育培養我們有形的專業技術和無形的思辨能力，但名校學位值得我們為此扛債嗎？
數字會說話
雖然中輟生馬克祖克伯(Facebook創辦人)現在成了億萬富翁，但平均而言，大學畢業生終其一生還是賺得比高中畢業生多很多。
美國薪水調查公司Payscale最近以投資報酬來評比大學，位於加州的私立哈維穆德學院(Harvey Mudd College)被選為第一。畢業校友可在20年內賺回約985,300美元(四年花費約237,700美元)。前15名有史丹佛、麻省理工、普林斯頓等大學。除了私立名校外，上榜的公立學校如科羅拉多礦業學院、喬治亞理工學院和密蘇里科技大學花費都不到哈佛的二分之一，但20年後的報酬可超過100,000美元。數據證明了比起選校，所選的主修才是影響投資報酬率的的因子。
看不見的優點
大學培養學子批判思考和人際關係，其所帶來的社會經濟效益跟有形的專業技術一樣重要。在高度競爭的工作環境下，職業流動性亦相應提高。 人力公司Jobvite發現具高度職業流動性的工作者，也就是能為了迎合市場需求而輕易轉換工作性質者，都擁有大學文憑。大學拓展學生的視野，看到更廣闊的職涯發展，而不單單只是侷限在單一領域。
職業流動性強的人所擁有的特質從學生時期就看得出來。不論在課堂還是在宿舍的經歷，都不是13周程式營可比擬的。大學可以遇到多樣的同儕、吸收大量的資訊、跟碰撞出新穎的想法。
但值得花這麼多錢嗎?
說了這麼多，但還是有個疑問尚未解決。為了念大學而背負沉重的學貸，值得嗎?
以我自己為例：高中時我對生物醫學比較有興趣，也順利申請上約翰‧霍普金斯和威斯康辛大學。約翰·霍普金斯大學的生物醫學排名全國第六，但是每年學費要26,000美元(現在則要47,000美元)。雖然威斯康辛大學排名只有第十，但可以讓我早一步獲得進入醫學院的資格，而且每年學費只要3,200美元(現在為8,650美元)。兩間學校都有頂尖師資和專業的教學設施。四個名次的差距值得我花22,800美元來彌補?最後我選擇了威斯康辛大學，在那裡盡情發掘我的電腦才能。畢業時我沒有任何貸款，還弄了個行動學習程式，就是StudyBlue。
我想不到250,000美元換來的名校學歷能保證甚麼好工作。Jobvite的執行長Dan Finnegan指出前20所頂尖大學將他們大部分的畢業生送往矽谷的公司，其中只有4間為私立。聖荷西州立大學的排名還在史丹佛和卡內基美隆大學之上。
當今年的高中畢業生於2019年完成大學學業時，希望屆時學校已經教會他們深思熟慮和實用主義。 我希望他們明白一個主修電腦科學的學生將會精通程式碼、可以為下一個熱門APP構思出好點子，但同時她也該知道誰是莎士比亞。如果無法從課室上接觸到莎士比亞，或許可以從校刊和同儕間的交流認識這名傑出的劇作家。同樣地，身為一個中文系的學生，除了通曉各詩詞小說外，他也該具備從數據中抽絲剝繭找資料的能力。要達到上述目標，我相信不需要花到25萬美元。
註1: 美國私立名校四年下來的學費約25萬美金。
[ 作者介紹：Chris Klundt ]
StudyBlue的共同創辦人暨執行長。StudyBlue為線上學習平台，學生可以製作閃示卡、上傳及分享學習資源。
[/tab]
[tab title=”English”]
College Acceptance Letters Out But Are You In For The Debt?
What is a college education truly worth? The answer lies somewhere between learning for learning’s sake and vocational training. But the days of considering a $250k Yale degree useful are quickly vanishing.
Ivy League acceptance emails just went out this week. Thousands have waited anxiously to find out if they were in the lucky 6-14% of applicants getting the nod. But in the wake of post-acceptance euphoria is the sobering reality of annual fees of up to $69,600, in the case of Harvard. The average student debt is quickly approaching $30,000 while the unemployment rate for young grads is at an unsettlingly high 8.5%.
With these statistics in mind, the purpose of attending college — if at all — is increasingly questioned.
Venture capitalist Peter Thiel famously pays students to leave school to pursue entrepreneurial projects.
A recent Wall Street Journal study suggests the pressure of rising debt and a weak job market is prompting students to declare majors earlier and shift toward “practical” subjects such as health or law enforcement.
In response to this increasingly popular view of higher education as job preparation, another camp has championed the renewed importance of college in “developing the muscle of thoughtfulness, the use of which will be the greatest pleasure in life and will also show what it means to be fully human,” according to one UNC English professor.
We can’t discount cultural enrichment, but choosing a major simply for that reason is a luxury. As tuition soars out of reach for many families, it’s worth considering the tangible — and intangible — returns of a degree. Higher education should equip us both with tangible skills and the critical thinking to identify practical situations in which to apply these skills. College is still worth something — just not decades of debt for a brand name diploma.
A case for college: the numbers
In light of skyrocketing tuition, the natural place to start is measurable value. We celebrate dropouts-turned-billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, but the average four-year college graduate still earns more over a lifetime than the average high school graduate — a record high of 98% more an hour in 2013, according to one study. On an individual level, those with college degrees see higher earnings than if they had only graduated high school.
Of course, these across-the-board gains vary by school. A recent Payscale ranking of colleges by return on investment gives the top spot to Harvey Mudd College, a private liberal arts college in California. Alumni can expect to see a return of $985,300 over twenty years (four years cost $237,700). The top 15 contains the usual suspects — Stanford, MIT, Princeton — but there’s a strong presence of public schools too. The Colorado School of Mines, Georgia Institute of Technology and Missouri University of Technology all cost less than half of Harvard, but have twenty-year returns of over $100,000 more. It’s a testament to the fact that major — not school — choice is the more valuable factor in justifying tangible ROI.
The intangibles
Just as important as college’s quantitative returns are the intangible ones, from valuable employee skills such as critical thinking and interpersonal relations to socioeconomic benefits. In today’s highly competitive workforce, job mobility is especially salient. A recent Jobvite study found the vast percentage of “high mobility” workers who readily change jobs to meet market demand have college educations. Rather than prepare students for single careers, college broadens the range of jobs and careers today’s graduates will have.
Many of the traits of high mobility workers are ingrained in students over the course of their college years. There are experiences, both in the classroom and the dorm, that a thirteen-week code camp can’t replicate. A diverse collection of peers and ideas demand critical thinking, interpersonal relations and working towards expectations, to name a few.
Is it worth the cost?
Considering higher education’s value-adds, from tangible ROI to job and social mobility, there’s still an important question to be asked. Is a college degree worth going into debt? Not in my experience.
As a high school senior interested in biomedical engineering, I was accepted by Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Wisconsin. Johns Hopkins’ program was ranked sixth in the nation, but annual tuition cost roughly $26,000 (now $47,000). Wisconsin — which offered me early acceptance to medical school — was ranked tenth. It cost $3,200 (now $8,650). Both schools had top-notch faculty and facilities. Was a difference of four spots in rankings worth an extra $22,800 a year, not including room and board? Not to me. I chose Wisconsin, where I discovered computer science. I graduated debt-free with an idea for a mobile learning app that grew into StudyBlue. I used the coding skills I learned to make a living, but also applied my speech and debate skills to raise funding and make connections.
I can’t think of any jobs guaranteed by a $250,000 degree from a “brand name” school. According to CEO Dan Finnegan, Jobvite found that of the top twenty schools sending the most graduates to Silicon Valley companies, only four are private. San Jose State tops the list ahead of Stanford or Carnegie Mellon.
When this year’s high school seniors graduate in 2019, I hope college will have taught them both thoughtfulness and pragmaticism. I hope they’ll know that a computer science major can become fluent in code or conceive an idea for the next great app. But she can — and should — also know Shakespeare, if not in the classroom then perhaps in a campus production or a conversation with classmates. An English major can become fluent in sonnets or novels. But he can — and should — also be able to write for different demographics or find stories from a set of data. And neither one needs to pay $250,000 to do it.
[ Author：Chris Klundt ]
He is the cofounder and CEO of StudyBlue, an online studying platform allowing students to create flashcards and upload and share study materials.
[/tab]
[/tabs]
原文刊登於《Forbes》，經作者Chris Klundt授權編譯，未經許可不得轉載
