美国大学世界第一？其实未必！

Americans Think We Have the World’s Best Colleges. We Don’t.
美国大学世界第一？其实未必！

Americans have a split vision of education. Conventional wisdom has long held that our K-12 schools are mediocre or worse, while our colleges and universities are world class. While policy wonks hotly debate K-12 reform ideas like vouchers and the Common Core state standards, higher education is largely left to its own devices. Many families are worried about how to get into and pay for increasingly expensive colleges. But the stellar quality of those institutions is assumed.

美国人对这个国家的教育体系往往有一种分裂的认识。传统观点一直认为，我们的K-12（从幼儿园到12年级）教育相对平庸，甚或更糟，但我们的学院和大学都是世界级的。政策专家们正在就入学券和共同核心(Common Core)州立标准等K-12学校改革思路展开激辩，但他们对高等教育基本上采取了放任自流的态度。许多家庭担心子女可能考不上大学，或者无力支付日益昂贵的大学学费。不过，他们一点都不怀疑美国大学的卓越品质。

Yet a recent multinational study of adult literacy and numeracy skills suggests that this view is wrong. America’s schools and colleges are actually far more alike than people believe — and not in a good way. The nation’s deep education problems, the data suggest, don’t magically disappear once students disappear behind ivy-covered walls.

然而，最近一项针对成人读写能力和算术技能的跨国研究表明，这种观点是错的。美国的初、中等教育和大学其实比人们所认为的要更相近，而且不是在好的方面相近。数据显示，美国教育的深层问题，并没有在学生迈入常春藤覆盖的围墙那一刻，奇迹般地消失。

The standard negative view of American K-12 schools has been highly influenced by international comparisons. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, periodically administers an exam called PISA to 15-year-olds in 69 countries. While results vary somewhat depending on the subject and grade level, America never looks very good. The same is true of other international tests. In PISA’s math test, the United States battles it out for last place among developed countries, along with Hungary and Lithuania.

世人对美国K-12的负面评价一直深受国际比较的影响。比如，经济合作与发展组织(OECD)定期组织开展一项名为国际学生评估项目(PISA)的考试，评估对象是遍及69个国家的15岁学生。虽然评估结果因测评学科和年级水平差异而略有不同，但美国学生从未交出一份看上去非常不错的成绩单。其它国际测试的结果亦是如此。在PISA数学考试中，一番比拼下来，美国往往在发达国家中位列末席，排在最后的还包括匈牙利和立陶宛学生。

America’s perceived international dominance of higher education, by contrast, rests largely on global rankings of top universities. According to a recent ranking by the London-based Times Higher Education, 18 of the world’s top 25 universities are American. Similarly, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, published annually by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, gives us 19 of 25.

相比之下，人们普遍认为美国的高等教育在全世界占据主导地位，而这种地位在很大程度上依托于顶尖大学的全球排名。伦敦《泰晤士高等教育》(Times Higher Education)最新发布的榜单显示，在全球排名前25位的大学中，有18所是美国大学。同样，根据上海交通大学(Shanghai Jiao Tong University)发布的年度世界大学学术排名(Academic Ranking of World Universities)，在全球排名前25位的大学中，有19所是美国大学。

But there is a problem with this way of thinking. When President Obama has said, “We have the best universities,” he has not meant: “Our universities are, on average, the best” — even though that’s what many people hear. He means, “Of the best universities, most are ours.” The distinction is important.

但这种思考方式是有问题的。奥巴马总统曾经声称，“我们拥有最好的大学。”这句话的意思并不是，“就平均而言，我们的大学是最好的”——尽管许多人这样理解。他的意思是说，“最好的大学基本上都在美国。”这里的区别至关重要。

PISA samples the whole population of students. When Mr. Obama said, “In eighth-grade math, we’ve fallen to ninth place,” he was referring to the average score of eighth graders. He didn’t say anything about how many of the world’s 13-year-old math geniuses were American.

PISA评估项目的抽样范围是全体学生。当奥巴马说，“在八年级数学考试中，我们已经跌至第九位，”他指的是八年级学生的平均分数。他并没有说全世界13岁的数学天才中有多少是美国学生。

International university rankings, moreover, have little to do with education. Instead, they focus on universities as research institutions, using metrics such as the number of Nobel Prize winners on staff and journal articles published. A university could stop enrolling undergraduates with no effect on its score.

此外，国际大学排名和教育水平几乎没有任何关系。相反，这类排名主要用于评估研究型大学，用的指标是获得诺贝尔奖的教师人数、发布的论文数量等等。即使一所大学停止招收本科生，那也不会对它的评分造成任何影响。

We see K-12 schools and colleges differently because we’re looking at two different yardsticks: the academic performance of the whole population of students in one case, the research performance of a small number of institutions in the other.

我们对K-12学校和大学持有不同看法，是因为我们一直在观察两个不同的衡量标准：前者的标准是全体学生的学习成绩，后者是少数院校的研究成果。

The fair way to compare the two systems, to each other and to systems in other countries, would be to conduct something like a PISA for higher education. That had never been done until late 2013, when the O.E.C.D. published exactly such a study.

无论是让这两套系统相互比较，还是让它们和其他国家的教育体系进行比较，一个公允的方式是对高等教育实施一种类似于PISA的评估项目。直到2013年底，OECD才正式推出了一项这样的研究。

The project is called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (known as Piaac, sometimes called “pee-ack”). In 2011 and 2012, 166,000 adults ages 16 to 65 were tested in the O.E.C.D. countries (most of Europe along with the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea) and Cyprus and Russia.

这项研究被称为“国际成人能力评估项目”（Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies，简称Piaac）。2011年和2012年，OECD成员国（包括大多数欧洲国家，以及美国、加拿大、澳大利亚、日本和韩国）、塞浦路斯和俄罗斯的16.6万名16岁至65岁成年人接受了这项测试。

Like PISA, Piaac tests people’s literacy and math skills. Because the test takers were adults, they were asked to use those skills in real-world contexts. They might, for example, be asked to read a news article and an email, each describing a different innovative method of improving drinking water quality in Africa, and identify the sentence in each document that describes a criticism common to both inventions. The test also included a measure of “problem-solving in technology-rich environments,” reflecting the nature of modern work.

如同PISA一样，Piaac测试人们的读写和数学技能。由于考生是成年人，他们被要求在现实世界背景下使用这些技能。比如，他们或许被要求阅读一篇新闻报道和一封电子邮件（分别描述了一种改善非洲饮用水质量的创新方法），并确认每个文档中对两项发明的指摘相同的句子。这项测试中也衡量了“在技术丰富的环境下解决问题的能力”，这反映了现代工作的性质。

As with the measures of K-12 education, the United States battles it out for last place, this time with Italy and Spain. Countries that traditionally trounce America on the PISA test of 15-year-olds, such as Japan and Finland, also have much higher levels of proficiency and skill among adults.

一如K-12教育的成绩单，美国在Piaac评估中的表现也垫底，这次和我们为伍的是意大利和西班牙。PISA测试成绩传统上完胜美国15岁学生的国家，比如日本和芬兰，也展现出了远高于美国成年人的水平和技能。

Of course, all 15-year-olds are required to go to school. College is voluntary. But when the Piaac numbers are calculated for people with different levels of education, America stills falls short of most other countries.

当然，15岁的孩子都必须上学，而上大学则是自愿的。但尽管Piaac的数据按照不同教育程度的人群分别核算，美国也依然落后于其他大多数国家。

Only 18 percent of American adults with bachelor’s degrees score at the top two levels of numeracy, compared with the international average of 24 percent. Over one-third of American bachelor’s degree holders failed to reach Level 3 on the five-level Piaac scale, which means that they cannot perform math-related tasks that “require several steps and may involve the choice of problem-solving strategies.” Americans with associate’s and graduate degrees also lag behind their international peers.

在有学士学位的美国成年人中，算术成绩处于最高两级的人只有18%，而这一比例的国际平均水平是24%。超过三分之一的美国学士学位持有者未能达到三级水平（Piaac评估项目共有五个级别），这意味着他们不能从事与数学有关，“需要几个步骤，可能需要选择解决问题的策略”的任务。拥有副学士和研究生学位的美国人，也落后于其他国家的同等学历者。

American results on the literacy and technology tests were somewhat better, in the sense that they were only mediocre. American adults were eighth from the bottom in literacy, for instance. And recent college graduates look no better than older ones. Among people ages 16 to 29 with a bachelor’s degree or better, America ranks 16th out of 24 in numeracy. There is no reason to believe that American colleges are, on average, the best in the world.

美国人的读写和技术测试成绩略好一些，不过也只能称得上平庸。比如，美国成年人的读写成绩处于倒数第八名。刚毕业的大学生看上去比往届毕业生好不到哪里去。在16岁到29岁，拥有学士或更高学位的人群中，美国的算术成绩位居24个国家的第16位。我们没有理由相信，就平均而言，美国的大学是世界上最好的。