The world is going to university.docx

UniversitiesThe world is going to universityMore and more money is being spent on higher education. Too little is known about whether it is worth it “AFTER God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for Gods worship and settled Civil Government, one of the next things we longed for and looked for was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity.” So ran the first university fundraising brochure, sent from Harvard College to England in 1643 to drum up cash.Americas early and lasting enthusiasm for higher education has given it the biggest and best-funded system in the world. Hardly surprising, then, that other countries are emulating its model as they send ever more of their school-leavers to get a university education. But, as our special report argues, just as Americas system is spreading, there are growing concerns about whether it is really worth the vast sums spent on it.The American wayThe modern research university, a marriage of the Oxbridge college and the German research institute, was invented in America, and has become the gold standard for the world. Mass higher education started in America in the 19th century, spread to Europe and East Asia in the 20th and is now happening pretty much everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa. The global tertiary-enrolment ratiothe share of the student-age population at universitywent up from 14% to 32% in the two decades to 2012; in that time, the number of countries with a ratio of more than half rose from five to 54. University enrolment is growing faster even than demand for that ultimate consumer good, the car. The hunger for degrees is understandable: these days they are a requirement for a decent job and an entry ticket to the middle class.There are, broadly, two ways of satisfying this huge demand. One is the continental European approach of state funding and provision, in which most institutions have equal resources and status. The second is the more market-based American model, of mixed private-public funding and provision, with brilliant, well-funded institutions at the top and poorer ones at the bottom.The world is moving in the American direction. More universities in more countries are charging students tuition fees. And as politicians realise that the “knowledge economy” requires top-flight research, public resources are being focused on a few privileged institutions and the competition to create world-class universities is intensifying.In some ways, that is excellent. The best universities are responsible for many of the discoveries that have made the world a safer, richer and more interesting place. But costs are rising. OECD countries spend 1.6% of GDP on higher education, compared with 1.3% in 2000. If the American model continues to spread, that share will rise further. America spends 2.7% of its GDP on higher education.If America were getting its moneys worth from higher education, that would be fine. On the research side, it probably is. In 2014, 19 of the 20 universities in the world that produced the most highly cited research papers were American. But on the educational side, the picture is less clear. American graduates score poorly in international numeracy and literacy rankings, and are slipping. In a recent study of academic achievement, 45% of American students made no gains in their first two years of university. Meanwhile, tuition fees have nearly doubled, in real terms, in 20 years. Student debt, at nearly $1.2 trillion, has surpassed credit-card debt and car loans.None of this means that going to university is a bad investment for a student. A bachelors degree in America still yields, on average, a 15% return. But it is less clear whether the growing investment in tertiary education makes sense for society as a whole. If graduates earn more than non-graduates because their studies have made them more productive, then university education will boost economic growth and society should want more of it. Yet poor student scores suggest otherwise. So, too, does the testimony of employers. A recent study of recruitment by professional-services firms found that they took graduates from the most prestigious universities not because of what the candidates might have learned but because of those institutions tough selection procedures. In short, students could be paying vast sums merely to go through a very elaborate sorting mechanism.If Americas universities are indeed poor value for money, why might that be? The main reason is that the market for higher education, like that for health care, does not work well. The government rewards universities for research, so that is what professors concentrate on. Students are looking for a degree from an institution that will impress employers; employers are interested primarily in the selectivity of the institution a candidate has attended. Since the value of a degree from a selective institution depends on its scarcity, good universities have little incentive to produce more graduates. And, in the absence of a clear measure of educational output, price becomes a proxy for quality. By charging more, good universities gain both revenue and prestige.Whats it worth?More information would make the higher-education market work better. Common tests, which students would sit alongside their final exams, could provide a comparable measure of universities educational performance. Students would have a better idea of what was taught well where, and employers of how much job candidates had learned. Resources would flow towards universities that were providing value for money and away from those that were not. Institutions would have an incentive to improve teaching and use technology to cut costs. Online courses, which have so far failed to realise their promise of revolutionising higher education, would begin to make a bigger impact. The government would have a better idea of whether society should be investing more or less in higher education.Sceptics argue that university education is too complex to be measured in this way. Certainly, testing 22-year-olds is harder than testing 12-year-olds. Yet many disciplines contain a core of material that all graduates in that subject should know. More generally, universities should be able to show that they have taught their students to think critically.Some governments and institutions are trying to shed light on educational outcomes. A few American state-university systems already administer a common test to graduates. Testing is spreading in Latin America. Most important, the OECD, whose PISA assessments of secondary education gave governments a jolt, is also having a go. It wants to test subject-knowledge and reasoning ability, starting with economics and engineering, and marking institutions as well as countries. Asian governments are keen, partly because they believe that a measure of the quality of their universities will help them in the market for international students; rich countries, which have more to lose and less to gain, are not. Without funding and participation from them, the effort will remain grounded.Governments need to get behind these efforts. Americas market-based system of well-funded, highly differentiated universities can be of huge benefit to society if students learn the right stuff. If not, a great deal of money will be wasted.大学全世界都在上大学越来越多的钱被花在高等教育上，至于是否值得却不得而知“在上帝把我们平安地带到了新英格兰之后，我们建造了自己的房屋，提供了生活的必需品，为敬拜上帝建立了便利之所，设立了公民政府。下一步我们所期望的事情之一就是发展教育，并延泽子孙万代。”1643年从哈佛学院发送给英国筹措资金的第一本大学筹款宣传册如是说。美国对于高等教育的热情产生时间早，且持续时间久，已经使其拥有世界上规模最大且资金最为雄厚的大学体系。其他国家纷纷效仿美国模式，输送越来越多的高中毕业生去接受大学教育也就毫不奇怪了。但是，正如我们的特别报道所述：随着美国教育体系的广泛传播，越来越多人担忧如此巨额的资金投入是否真的值得。美国之道由美国创造的现代研究型大学是牛津大学、剑桥大学和德国研究机构的合体，已经被世界奉为金标准。大规模的高等教育始于19世纪的美国，20世纪传播到欧洲和东亚，现在几乎遍布除了撒哈拉以南非洲地区的各个角落。在2012年之前的20年里，全球大学入学率，即大学学生占适龄人口的比例，从14%上升到32%；与此同时，入学率超过50%的国家从5个增加到54个。大学入学率的增长速度甚至超过了最终消费品如汽车的需求量增长。对学位的渴求是可以理解的：如今学历是获得一份体面工作的必要条件，也是一张中产阶级的入场券。广义地说，有两种方式可以满足如此巨大的需求。一是欧洲大陆的方法，即国家拨款提供资金，大部分院校都拥有均等的资源和地位。二是更加基于市场的美国模式，即私人和公共混合资助，机构办学出色且资金充裕的院校位于顶层，而资金匮乏的院校则处于底层。世界正在朝着美国模式前行。越来越多国家里，有越来越多的大学在向学生收取学费。而且正如政治家们所认识到的，“知识经济”需要一流的研究，因此公共资源正在向少数享有特权的机构集中，打造世界一流大学的竞争日趋激烈。在某些方面，这样是极好的。正是因为最优秀大学的许多发现，才使这个世界更加安全、富裕和有趣。但是这样做的成本却在增加。世界经合组织国家在高等教育上的花费占了GDP的1.6%,2000年这个比例是1.3%。如果美国模式继续传播，这一比例仍将上升。美国在高等教育上的投入是GDP的2.7%。如果美国在高等教育上的投入物有所值，那也不赖。就科研角度也确实如此。2014年，全世界发表的论文被引用次数最多的20所大学里，美国独占19所。但是就教育而言，情况就不太明晰了。美国大学毕业生在国际数学和读写能力排名中得分低下，且仍在下滑。针对学术成就的最新研究表明，45%的美国学生在大学头两年几无所获。与此同时，按实质计算，学费在近20年翻了一番。学生贷款接近1.2万亿美元，已经超过了信用卡债务和汽车贷款。但这并不是说读大学对于学生而言是糟糕的投资。在美国，一个学士学位平均仍有15%的回报。但是对整个社会而言，对高等教育越来越多的投资是否合理仍不明朗。如果大学毕业生比非大学毕业生赚得多，是因为大学学习使之拥有更高的效率，那么大学教育将会推动经济增长，社会对其的需求也会更多。但是大学生成绩之差却表明事实并非如此，雇主的评价也证实了这一点。针对专业服务公司的招聘情况研究