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If student loan programs are bad, what would be better?
如果学生贷款项目不好，那么什么才是更好的呢？
Whatever their complaints, most critics gravitate to the same solution:
不论批评的声音如何，大部分批评家还是倾向于相同的解决方案：
Make tuition so cheap that students no longer need to borrow.
让学费便宜些，这样学生就无需借钱上学。
As the Wharton School's Peter Cappelli writes in “Will College Pay Off?”,
正如（宾夕法尼亚大学）沃顿商学院的彼得·卡普利在《上大学会有回报吗？》一文中写道，
"Using loans to pay for college is an idea with great appeal to economists because the people getting the financial benefit—
“用贷款支付大学学费对经济学家很有吸引力，因为有既得的经济利益——
the graduates who get the good jobs—are the ones paying for it….
找到好工作的毕业生，会为此买单……
If there is not a good payoff from the degree, that argument falls apart."
如果贷款拿到的学位没有得到好的回报，那么这个论据是站不住脚的。”
Suppose, however, that governments slashed college tuition.
然而，假设政府降低了大学学费，
How would this encourage students to finish their studies or carefully choose a promising major?
又将如何鼓励学生完成学业或是慎重选择一个前景光明的专业呢？
What would this do about all the wasted time and money we already see from those who drop out or squeak through?
对于那些虚度光阴、浪费金钱的学生，最后辍学或是勉强毕业，降低学费又有什么用呢？
Free college would plainly encourage even weaker students to throw the dice.
免费大学显然会鼓励更弱的学生掷骰子。
What's the harm of creating limitless educational opportunities?
创造无限的教育机会会有什么害处吗？
The most obvious is the massive burden on taxpayers.
最明显的是纳税人的负担。
The deeper problem, though, is that the more college degrees multiply, the less they mean to employers.
然而，更深层次的意义是，大学学位越多，对雇主的意义就越小。
Researchers call this "credential inflation."
研究人员称之为“学历通货膨胀”。
Most of what you learn in college never comes up after the final exam.
大部分在大学学到的东西从不会在期末考试后出现。
This is obvious for literature and history majors, but even engineers spend semesters on mathematical proofs that never come up on the job.
这对文史专业的学生尤为常见，但即使是工程专业也要花好几个学期的时间做那些工作中从不会出现的数学证明。
Employers reward college degrees primarily because they certify graduates’ intelligence, work ethic and sheer conformity.
雇主对大学学历青眼有加是因为学历证明了毕业生的智慧、职业道德和诚信。
So when educational opportunities expand, employers don’t respond by handing every graduate a good job. Instead, they raise the bar.
因此，当教育机会扩大时，雇主不会给每个毕业生一份好工作。相反，标准会提高。
Credential inflation explains why so many of today's young people need a college degree to get the same job their parents got with a high school diploma.
“学历通货膨胀”解释了为什么今天的许多年轻人需要大学文凭才能得到和他们的父母一样的高中文凭工作。
True, cognitively demanding jobs are more common than they were in the 1970s, but they remain fairly rare.
诚然，与上世纪70年代相比，有知识要求的工作更多了，但它们仍然相当罕见。
Secretaries, waiters and the other classic "noncollege" jobs shouldn't require an undergraduate pedigree.
秘书、服务员和其他典型的“非大学”工作不应该要求有本科学历。
As an internet meme quips, "When everyone has a bachelor's degree, no one does."
就像一个网络梗调侃的那样：“当每个人都有学士学位时，就相当于没人有”。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
