大学学位真的值得吗？关于高等教育价值的激烈辩论

【中美创新时报2025 年 2 月 12 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）随着大学学费接近六位数，学生越来越不愿意承担大额贷款，一个问题越来越成为那些沉浸在大学搜索过程中的人最关心的问题：我对四年制学位的巨额投资会得到回报吗？《波士顿环球报》记者Hilary Burns 对此作了下述报道。

根据一种在教育研究人员和公共政策制定者中越来越受欢迎的新投资回报率工具，答案通常是——但并非总是如此。学生在哪里学习，尤其是学习什么，对他们毕业时是否有光明的经济前景有着巨大的影响。

该工具是一个可搜索的数据库，由右翼的美国企业研究所经济学家普雷斯顿·库珀开发，显示了全国大学学位课程的预计投资回报率 (ROI)。《波士顿环球报》用它分析了 175 所新英格兰学院和大学的学士学位课程，结果既令人鼓舞又令人警醒：大多数课程都获得了回报，但约 15% 的课程没有为学生带来净收益，这些学生大多是哲学和心理学等人文和社会科学专业的学生。

“长期以来，人们一直认为大学学位永远是值得的，永远是最好的道路，”库珀说。“大多数情况下都是如此，但也有例外。”

库珀和其他教育政策专家表示，研究投资回报率结果可能会激发创新甚至激进的想法，让高等教育在经济上更容易接受，包括对不同专业收取不同的学费。毕竟，与大多数人文学科课程相比，STEM 学位对机构而言更昂贵，因此薪水也往往更高，乔治城大学教育与劳动力中心主任 Jeff Strohl 表示。

“[学校] 有责任进行创新，让 [一些课程] 更实惠，”哈佛大学讲师、克莱顿·克里斯滕森颠覆性创新研究所联合创始人 Michael Horn 表示。“社会工作课程没有理由花费 125,000 美元”，因为社会工作者的工资往往很低。

他的数据集显示，在美国最负盛名的大学，你几乎可以学习任何东西并获得正回报。例如，阿默斯特学院的历史专业学生的平均起薪约为 75,000 美元，10 年后每年可拿到 160,000 美元。库珀说，这意味着从阿默斯特大学毕业的历史专业学生一生的收入平均比没有上过大学的学生多 380 万美元。

然而，在大多数州立大学和选择性较低的私立院校，回报因学生学习的内容而异。在马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分校，计算机科学专业学生毕业 10 年后的平均收入为 144,000 美元，而学习人类学或哲学的学生毕业 10 年后的平均收入分别为 51,000 美元和 57,000 美元。

专注于为学生准备职业的机构，尤其是那些有合作和实习项目的机构，往往是那些希望尽快获得最大回报的人的不错选择。

重要的是，结果仅包括有资格获得联邦财政援助或贷款的学生，而不包括那些来自富裕家庭、全额支付学费或依赖奖学金等其他资金的学生。此外，数据没有考虑毕业生的职业，只是考虑了他们的收入随时间的变化；许多大学毕业生最终从事的不是本专业。

此外，数据有些不精确，因此在某些地方，数据并不直接对应大学提供的所有专业，因为联邦政府将一些单独的课程归入更广泛的类别，例如“音乐”或“区域研究”。

以当今的价格计算，大学教育的价值已成为高等教育的核心问题，部分原因是许多毕业生在职业生涯中背负了巨额债务；根据教育数据倡议，学生贷款债务已膨胀至 1.73 万亿美元，其中大部分是通过联邦政府借入的。许多家长和学生以及越来越多的政客都在质疑四年制学位是否值得。

在某种程度上，大学表示，他们已经通过扩大就业办公室、增加机构财政援助、定期审查（有时取消）入学率低的课程或增加热门学习领域来解决其中一些批评。例如，新英格兰地区的几所学校近年来取消了人文学科专业，而包括伊曼纽尔学院在内的一些学校则增加了护理学位，以解决工人短缺问题。

近年来，民主党一直呼吁提高高等教育成果、收入和债务负担的透明度。前教育部副部长詹姆斯·克瓦尔表示，拜登政府最终确定了所谓的“有偿就业”规则，该规则要求大学披露普通毕业生的收入、欠款以及这些平均债务负担是否难以承受。

特朗普政府似乎正在采取行动实施“有偿就业”，这将使学生在负债之前更好地评估他们选择的大学的价值。然而，大学及其游说者正在推动将目前定于 2 月 18 日的截止日期延长至至少 7 月。

现在共和党控制了国会和白宫，研究人员和行业分析师预计，立法者将加大对大学的压力，要求其降低成本并提高毕业率，要么威胁削减联邦资金，要么让学校承担无法偿还贷款的毕业生和辍学者的责任。

“民主党和共和党都认为，美国的学生贷款债务已达到天文数字，”时任教育和劳动力委员会共和党主席的众议员弗吉尼亚·福克斯去年表示：“毫无疑问，这个问题的根源是获得大学学位的成本过高，改革空间很大。”

然而，关于如何计算大学学位的投资回报率存在着尖锐的分歧。

库珀的工具越来越可信，因为与许多其他数据集（例如，研究来自特定机构的学生）不同，他的工具分析了各个学习课程的回报，揭示了不同专业之间的巨大差异。他的方法依赖于 2015 年至 2017 年毕业的学生的终生收入估计，基于联邦政府的大学记分卡数据，并减去学位的总成本和“反事实收入”，即同一学生在没有接受高等教育的情况下估计的收入。反事实会根据每所学校的典型学生情况进行调整；一些学校招收更多的低收入和第一代学生，从统计上看，他们的收入低于来自富裕家庭的人。

“普雷斯顿的工具在提供准确信息方面显然更胜一筹，”霍恩说。

然而，这种方法在许多大学管理人员中存在争议。数十人没有回应《波士顿环球报》的询问，其他人则对使用 8 到 10 年前的数据提出强烈质疑，或者数据集遗漏了没有参加联邦援助或贷款计划的富裕学生。 （库珀表示，他最关心的是那些“纳税人资助”的学生的成果；他说，数据的时间滞后是收集毕业生多年薪资数据所必需的。）

根据 Cooper 的数据集，几所主要专注于艺术或音乐的私立机构的财务成果最低。例如，伯克利音乐学院除了数据集中包含的一个四年制学位课程外，其余所有课程的收益均为负值。该校拒绝置评。

许多学生攻读音乐、舞蹈、戏剧和艺术学位是为了追随激情，而不是追求经济利益。新罕布什尔大学戏剧和舞蹈教授 David Kaye 表示，这些专业通常教授“沟通、协作、创造力”等重要技能，这些技能对许多工作都有帮助。

Cooper 本人承认，财务成果不应成为未来学生考虑的唯一因素，但他说，财务成果“确实很重要”。他希望他的数据集能够引发关于降低学位课程价格的辩论，这些学位课程往往会带来教师、社会工作者或艺术家等低薪领域的工作，或者激励学校向成功通过人文和艺术课程让学生获得可维持生计的工资的同行学习。

“向他们传授与劳动力相关的技能——例如，英语专业学生具备营销技能，”库珀说。“如果你是一名对戏剧感兴趣的学生，你能否在戏剧中做学徒，边工作边学习，而不是支付数千美元的学费。这些都是可以讨论的话题。有办法让这些领域对学生来说更具经济可行性。”

然而，现实生活是复杂的。诺埃尔·斯托林斯 (Noelle Stallings) 是东北大学的应届毕业生，当她还是弗吉尼亚州农村的一名高中生时，她无法获得投资回报率信息，当时她正在决定去哪里上学或学习什么。她选择了东北大学，库珀的数据集显示，如果拥有强大的合作项目，这通常是一笔很好的投资。然而，对于斯托林斯来说，合作项目——最终也是东北大学的真正价值——在于它教会了她不想做什么。

她学习了环境科学，并了解到她不想像在合作社那样在企业界从事办公室工作。自大约一年前毕业以来，斯托林斯背包游历欧洲，在有机农场和冰岛的一个营地工作。她还在波士顿做过咖啡师。

她很感激东北大学提供的教育，但她确实希望自己能找到一种更便宜的方式来了解自己，她仍在寻找一条能让她快乐并支付账单的职业道路，包括偿还学生债务，她说这是她的“首要任务”。

“我喜欢户外活动——我可以想象自己为研究做现场技术工作，”斯托林斯说。“但我不知道我是否可以把它作为一份全职工作，而且你也赚不到钱。”

乔治城大学教育和劳动力中心的斯特罗尔表示，像库珀这样的数据集有助于指导未来的学生和家庭，但不应被解读为他们会看到某些结果的保证。

“学校应该投资咨询，帮助学生了解这些信息的价值，”斯特罗尔说。他补充说，院校还应努力与劳动力市场和所在地区的其他院校更好地协调一致，以确保不会在某些领域产生过多的毕业生。

一些院校正在悄悄关注投资回报率数据，近年来做出了一些改变，以提高学生的价值，例如取消入学率低、平均收入较低的课程，增加符合地区劳动力短缺的专业。

例如，新罕布什尔州亨尼克尔的新英格兰学院三年前增加了一个护理课程，该课程将工作经验纳入毕业前课程。该学院校长 Wayne Lesperance Jr. 说，学生们“手里拿着工作机会走过舞台”。Lesperance 说，近年来，该学院还不得不做出“艰难的决定”，包括由于入学率低而结束英语课程。

Cooper 的数据集显示，2015 年至 2017 年新英格兰学院毕业生的平均起薪约为 33,000 美元； 10 年后的平均工资为 54,000 美元。

“高等教育作为一个行业，在为自己辩护方面做得很糟糕，”Lesperance 说。“我们运营了太长时间，以为每个人都知道 [投资回报] 是多少。”

米尔顿的 Curry College 是一所小型学校，大约五分之一的学生有学习差异，该校保证其毕业生（从 2027 届开始）将在毕业后六个月内收到工作邀请或研究生院录取通知。Curry 总裁 Jay Gonzalez 表示，任何未收到录取通知的学生在与职业顾问合作期间，都有资格获得长达 12 个月的联邦学生贷款偿还。

冈萨雷斯说：“我们试图回应我们所听到的首要市场需求，即‘如果我们要支付所有金钱去上四年制大学并花费所有时间，那么我最终能得到什么样的工作？’”

题图：（从左到右）大四学生 Hannah Mailey 和大三学生 Maggie Theofanides 和 Aoi Tamura 在纽波特萨尔维雷吉纳大学的物理化学 II 课上进行了一项实验。Craig F. Walker/Globe 员工

附原英文报道：

Is a college degree really worth it? Inside the heated debate about the value of higher education.

By Hilary Burns Globe Staff,Updated February 12, 2025 

(Left to right) Senior Hannah Mailey and juniors Maggie Theofanides and Aoi Tamura worked on an experiment during their Physical Chemistry II class at Salve Regina University in Newport.Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff

With college sticker prices approaching six figures, and students increasingly wary of taking on big loans, one question is increasingly top-of-mind for those immersed in the college search process: Will my hefty investment in a four-year degree pay off?

The answer is, usually — but not always, according to a new return-on-investment tool that’s gaining traction among education researchers and public policy makers. Where, and especially what, a student studies can make an enormous difference in whether they graduate with a promising financial future.

The tool, a searchable database developed by economist Preston Cooper of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, shows the estimated return on investment (ROI) for college degree programs across the country. The Globe used it to analyze bachelor’s degree programs at 175 New England colleges and universities, and the results were both encouraging and sobering: Most paid off, but about 15 percent did not yield net gains for students, largely majors in the humanities and social sciences such as philosophy and psychology.

“For a long time, people have had this view that a college degree will always be worth it and is always going to be the best path,” Cooper said. “That is true most of the time, but there are exceptions to that rule.”

Studying ROI results, said Cooper and others in education policy, could spark innovative, even radical, ideas about how to make higher education financially more palatable, including charging different tuition prices for different majors. STEM degrees, after all, are more expensive for institutions to offer than most programs in the humanities, and consequently also often pay much more, said Jeff Strohl, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

“It is incumbent on [schools] to innovate and make [some programs] more affordable,” said Michael Horn, a Harvard University lecturer and cofounder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation. “There’s no reason a social work program ought to cost $125,000,” because social worker salaries tend to be low.

At the country’s most prestigious colleges, his data set shows, you can study almost anything and get a positive return. History majors at Amherst College, for example, earned average starting salaries of about $75,000, and took home $160,000 annually after 10 years. That means history majors who graduate from Amherst are on average $3.8 million better off over the course of their lifetimes than if they had not gone to college at all, Cooper said.

At most state universities and less-selective private institutions, however, returns vary widely depending on what a student studies. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the average earnings for a computer science major were $144,000 10 years after college, while students studying anthropology or philosophy earned $51,000 and $57,000, respectively, 10 years after graduation.

Institutions that focus on preparing students for careers, especially those with co-op and internship programs, tend to be good bets for those looking to get the most bang for their buck as soon as possible.

Importantly, the results include only students who qualified for federal financial aid or loans and not those from wealthier families who paid full freight or who relied on other funds such as scholarships. Additionally, the data did not consider the occupations of graduates, merely what their incomes were over time; many college graduates end up in fields other than their majors.

Moreover, there is some imprecision to the data, so that in places it will not directly correspond to all the majors a college offers because the federal government groups some individual programs into broader categories such as “music” or “area studies.”

The value of a college education at today’s prices has become a central issue in higher education, in part because so many graduates are saddled with enormous debts deep into their careers; student loan debt has ballooned to $1.73 trillion, according to the Education Data Initiative, most of which was borrowed through the federal government. Many parents and students, and a growing number of politicians, are questioning whether a four-year degree is worth it.

To some extent, colleges say they have addressed some of these criticisms by expanding their career offices, increasing institutional financial aid, and regularly reviewing, and sometimes eliminating, programs with low enrollment, or adding in-demand areas of study. For example, several schools around New England have eliminated humanities majors in recent years and some, including Emmanuel College, have added nursing degrees to address worker shortages.

Democrats have been calling for more transparency about higher education outcomes, earnings, and debt loads in recent years. The Biden administration finalized the so-called Gainful Employment rule, which would require colleges to disclose what a typical graduate earns, owes, and whether those average debt loads are unaffordable, said James Kvaal, former undersecretary of education.

The Trump administration appears to be moving to implement Gainful Employment, which would allow students to better assess the value of their college choice before they go into debt. However, colleges and their lobbyists are pushing to extend the deadline, currently set for Feb. 18, to at least July.

Now that Republicans have control of Congress and the White House, researchers and industry analysts expect lawmakers to increase pressure on colleges to reduce costs and improve graduation rates, either by threatening cuts in federal funding, or by putting schools on the hook for graduates and dropouts who cannot repay their loans.

“Democrats and Republicans agree that student loan debt in America has reached astronomical levels,” Representative Virginia Foxx, then-GOP chair of the Education and the Workforce Committee, said last year: “Without question, the root cause of this problem is the inflated cost of obtaining a college degree, and there’s considerable room for reforms.”

There is sharp disagreement, however, about how to calculate return on investment for college degrees.

Cooper’s tool is gaining credibility because, unlike many other data sets that, for example, looked at students from a particular institution, his analyzes returns for individual programs of study, which reveals dramatic variation among different majors. His methodology relies on lifetime earnings estimates for students who graduated from 2015 to 2017, based on data from the federal government’s College Scorecard, and subtracts the total cost of the degree and “counterfactual earnings,” or the estimated amount the same student would have earned without higher education. The counterfactual makes adjustments for the typical student profile at each institution; some schools serve more low-income and first-generation students who statistically earn less money than people from more affluent backgrounds.

“Preston’s tool is pretty clearly superior in giving an accurate picture,” Horn said.

The approach is controversial, however, among many college administrators. Dozens didn’t respond to inquiries from the Globe, and others sharply contested the use of data from eight to 10 years ago, or that the data set leaves out wealthy students who do not participate in federal aid or loan programs. (Cooper said he is most concerned with the outcomes of students who “taxpayers are funding;” and the time lag in the data, he said, was necessary to collect multiple years of salary data for graduates.)

Several private institutions focused mostly on art or music posted some of the lowest financial outcomes, according to Cooper’s data set. Berklee College of Music, for example, had negative returns for all but one of its four-year degree programs included in the data set. The school declined to comment.

Many students pursue degrees in music, dance, theater, and art to follow a passion rather than pursuing financial gains. And those majors often teach important skills such as “communication, collaboration, creativity,” which can be helpful in any number of jobs, said David Kaye, professor of theater and dance at UNH.

Cooper himself acknowledges that financial outcomes should not be the only factor a prospective student considers, but they “do matter,” he said. He hopes his data set will spark debate about lowering prices for degree programs that tend to lead to jobs in lower-paying fields, such as teachers, social workers, or artists, or inspire schools to learn from peers that successfully launch students into careers with livable wages from humanities and art programs.

“Giving them skills relevant to the labor force — an English major with marketing skills, for example,” Cooper said. “If you are a student interested in theater, could you do apprenticeships in theater, working while learning, rather than paying thousands in tuition. These are conversations to be had. There are ways to make these fields more financially viable to students.”

Real life, though, is complicated. Noelle Stallings, a recent graduate of Northeastern, did not have access to ROI information when she was a driven high school senior in rural Virginia deciding where to go to school or what to study. She chose Northeastern, which Cooper’s data set shows is usually a great investment with a strong co-op program. For Stallings, though, the real value of the co-op program — and, ultimately, of Northeastern — was that it taught her what she didn’t want to do with her life.

She studied environmental science and learned she did not want an office job in the corporate world like she had in one of her co-ops. Since graduating about a year ago, Stallings has backpacked through Europe working on organic farms, and at a camp in Iceland. She has also worked as a barista in Boston.

She appreciates the education Northeastern provided, but she does wish she’d found a cheaper way to learn about herself, and is still figuring out a career path that will make her happy and cover her bills, including student debt repayments, which she says are her “number one priority.”

“I like being outside — I could see myself doing field tech stuff for research,“ Stallings said. ”But I don’t know if I could do that as a full-time job, and also you don’t make money.”

Strohl, with the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, said data sets like Cooper’s are helpful to guide prospective students and families, but should not be read as a guarantee they will see certain outcomes.

“Schools should invest in counseling to help students understand the value of this information,” Strohl said. Institutions, he added, should also try to be better aligned with the labor market and with other institutions in their region to ensure they aren’t overproducing graduates in certain fields.

Some colleges are quietly tuning in to ROI data, and have made changes in recent years to increase value for students, such as dropping programs with low enrollment and lower average earnings, and adding majors that align with regional workforce shortages.

New England College in Henniker, N.H., for example, added a nursing program three years ago that incorporates work experience before graduation. Students “walk across the stage with a job offer in hand,” said Wayne Lesperance Jr., the college’s president. The college has also had to make “tough decisions,” in recent years including ending its English program because enrollment was low, Lesperance said.

Cooper’s data set shows average starting salaries for graduates of New England College from 2015 to 2017 were about $33,000; average salaries after 10 years were $54,000.

“Higher ed as an industry has done a terrible job making the case for itself,” said Lesperance. “We have operated for far too long thinking everyone knows what the [return on investment] is.”

Curry College in Milton, a small school where about a fifth of students have learning differences, guarantees its graduates (starting with the class of 2027) will receive job offers or graduate school acceptances within six months of graduation. Any student who does not will be eligible to have their federal student loans paid for up to 12 months while they work with a career adviser, said Curry president Jay Gonzalez.

“We’ve tried to respond to the number one market demand that we hear, which is, ‘If we’re going to pay all this money to go to a four-year college and spend all the time to go, what’s the job I’m going to get at the end of the day?‘ ” Gonzalez said.