学历越高饭碗越安全？

杭州泰弗尔英语 · 发表于 2011-3-24 17:40:21

Fifteen years after high school, the working lives of Tremell Sinclair and Phyllis Sellars have evolved very differently, largely because of a single decision.

Ms. Sellars went to college; Mr. Sinclair didn't.

That decision has always shaped their economic prospects, but never more so than during the recent recession: Ms. Sellars kept her white-collar job, recently landing a pay raise, while Mr. Sinclair was laid off from his forklift driving job last year and only just found a new one -- at a 46% lower salary.

The classmates illustrate a divide between the fortunes of Americans with college degrees and those without. It's not only that the college educated earn more, but that they are far more likely to keep their jobs when times get tough. By some measures, recession has exacerbated the divide. The unemployment rate for workers 25-and-older with a bachelor's degree or higher was 4.6% in August, for example, compared with 10.3% for those with just a high-school diploma. That's a 5.7-percentage-point gap, compared with a gap of only 2.6 percentage points in December 2007 when the recession began.

Laid-off college graduates are also finding work faster. Their median duration of unemployment was 18.4 weeks as of August, compared with 27.5 weeks for high-school grads. Three years ago, that figure was roughly the same for both groups -- 9.5 weeks and 9.6, respectively. And among the worst-off 25-and-older workers, the 5.2 million who have been out of work six months or more, only 19% are those who graduated from college, even though that group makes up a third of the work force.

Yet because college is increasingly expensive and doesn't guarantee a good job at a good wage, skepticism about the value of college is rising, even as the government pours more money into helping people get degrees. As part of the health-care legislation passed in March, Congress approved a student-loan overhaul that replaces private lenders with the federal Department of Education and redirects some $60 billion to community colleges and programs such as Pell Grants, which are college loans for the needy.

To economists who look at the numbers, college is a necessary, even if not sufficient, ticket to the middle class. 'We are experiencing a period of shared misery, where workers at all education levels are struggling, including those with a college degree,' says Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank. Still, he says, 'It is certainly evident that those with college educations are faring much better than those with less education.'

Not that a diploma is the slam-dunk it once was. It no longer guarantees a wage that rises faster than inflation. And while people with four-year college degrees make, on average, 64% more than those with only high-school degrees, that wage premium hasn't climbed much since 2001, after rising sharply for two decades.

Meantime, the unemployment rate for people with a college degree or higher, though lower than others', is the highest it's been since comparable data begin in 1979, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the Economic Policy Institute. Even in the early 1980s recession, when national unemployment hit 10.8%, the rate for people with college degree or higher never eclipsed 3.9%.

College tuition has also grown faster than the rate of inflation for more than two decades, including a 6% increase in 2009 -- a period when overall prices fell. Some 64% of Americans thought college was a good investment in July, down from 79% a year earlier, according to a telephone poll of 3,000 individuals conducted in July for Country Financial, a Bloomington, Ill., financial-services company.

高中毕业十五年后，辛克莱尔(Tremell Sinclair)和塞拉斯(Phyllis Sellars)的职业发展有了很大的不同，而这在很大程度上是由于当初一个简单的决定所导致。

塞拉斯念了大学，而辛克莱尔没有。

Paul Octavious for the Wall Street Journal辛克莱尔和他的儿子参加高中同学聚会。这个决定一直以来都影响着他们各自的经济前景，但影响力始终都不及在最近的衰退中所体现得那般明显。塞拉斯保住了她的白领工作，最近还加了薪，而辛克莱尔去年却因裁员失去了他铲车驾驶员的工作，近日才刚刚找到新工作，可工资却低了46%。

这对同班同学向人们展示了拥有大学学历的美国人与那些没有念过大学的美国人之间的迥异命运。接受过大学教育的人不仅仅挣得更多，他们在大环境变得艰难时保住工作的可能性也要大得多。从某些方面看，衰退加剧了这种差距。举例来说，8月份时，25岁及以上拥有学士或更高学位的工人这一群体的失业率为4.6%，相比之下仅有高中学历的人群当月的失业率为10.3%。二者间有5.7个百分点的差距，而在2007年12月衰退开始时，这一差距仅有2.6个百分点。

被裁员的大学毕业生找到新工作的速度也更快。截至8月份，他们处于失业状态的持续时间中值为18.4周，而高中毕业生为27.5周。三年前，两类人群的这一数值相差无几，分别为9.5周和9.6周。在25岁及以上生活贫困的工人中，520万失业达六个月甚至更长时间的人中仅有19%是大学毕业生，尽管这一群体在劳动人口中占据了三分之一。

然而由于上大学的成本变得越来越高，而且毕业后也并不一定能保证找到一份薪水丰厚的工作，因此即便政府为帮助人们获得学位加大了资金投入，对于大学价值的怀疑仍是与日俱增。作为3月份通过的医疗保健法案的一部分，美国国会批准了一项学生贷款改革，以前的私人放贷者被联邦教育部所取代，还将约600亿美元的资金转而用于社区学院及Pell Grants等项目。Pell Grants是为贫困学生提供大学贷款的项目。

在了解了上面这些数字的经济学家看来，大学学历即便不是成为中产阶级的充分条件，也是必要条件。经济政策研究所(Economic Policy Institute)是一家左倾的华盛顿智囊机构，其所长米舍尔(Lawrence Mishel)说，我们正在经历一个“共患难”的时期，不管是何种教育水平的工人都在艰难奋斗，包括那些拥有大学学历的人。不过他说相比教育水平较低的人，大学学历者的境况要好得多，这一点无疑是显而易见的。

学历不再像以往那样是什么优势了。它不再能确保带来一份上涨速度快于通货膨胀的工资。虽然平均来说拥有四年大学背景的人，他们挣的钱要比高中学历者多64%，但这种薪资上的优势自2001年以来便没有扩大太多，只是在此前的二十年间大幅上升。

与此同时，经济政策研究所对美国劳工部的数据研究显示，拥有大学或更高学历的人群失业率尽管要低于其他人，但目前却位于1979年开始记录可供比较的数据以来的最高值。即使是在上世纪八十年代初的衰退期间，当时美国全国的失业率触及10.8%，具有大学或更高学历背景人群的失业率从未超过3.9%。

大学学费在过去二十多年间也以超过通胀速度的步伐增长着，其中2009年时上涨了6%，这还是在一个整体物价都下跌的时期。根据7月份对3,000名受访者进行的一项电话调查显示，约64%的美国人在7月份时认为大学是一种不错的投资，这一比例不及上年同期的79%。该调查是为伊利诺伊州金融服务公司Country Financial进行的。