来源：《洛杉矶时报》
原文刊登日期：2021年11月12日
It can be hard to keep up with the scandals at USC. In just the last few weeks, there’s been a flurry of bad news coming from the prestigious private university. For now, let’s zero in on the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, where the troubles are endemic to USC’s culture but also speak to deeper problems in higher education.
南加州大学的丑闻可能让人很难跟上。就在过去几周，这所著名的私立大学传出了一连串的坏消息。现在，让我们把注意力集中在苏珊娜·杜拉克-佩克社会工作学院，在那里，这些问题是南加州大学文化中特有的，但也涉及到高等教育中更深层次的问题。
Over the last decade, USC partnered with for-profit company 2U to develop its online social work master’s program and recruit students for the two-year degree, which last year cost $115,000. USC targeted low-income students of color and recruited candidates with low grades to meet enrollment targets, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
在过去10年里，南加州大学与营利性公司2U合作，开发了在线社会工作硕士项目，并招收两年制学位的学生，去年的学费为11.5万美元。据《华尔街日报》报道，南加州大学以低收入的有色人种学生为目标，招收成绩较低的学生以达到入学人数目标。
Enrollment boomed but the fallout tarnished the program’s reputation and left graduates with staggering debt.
入学人数激增，但随之而来的后果损害了该项目的声誉，并让毕业生背上了惊人的债务。
In a comparison with other master’s degree programs at top-tier U.S. universities, the USC social work degree had one of the worse combinations of debt and earnings, according to the Journal’s analysis. Recent USC social work graduates who took out federal loans borrowed a median of $112,000; half of them were earning $52,000 or less two years later.
《华尔街日报》的分析显示，与其他美国顶级大学的硕士学位项目相比，南加州大学社会工作专业的债务和收入组合状况最差。最近的南加州大学社会工作毕业生获得联邦贷款的贷款中值为112,000美元；两年后，其中一半人的收入不到52000美元。
The pursuit of growth didn’t help the School of Social Work either. Though online education was expected to bring lots of new tuition dollars without the expense of building new dorms or classrooms, the arrangement gave 60% of the online tuition to for-profit 2U. By 2019, the school was facing serious budget woes and staff cuts.
追求增长对社会工作学院也没有帮助。尽管在线教育预计将带来大量新的学费，而无需建造新的宿舍或教室，但根据约定，盈利性的2U拿走60%的线上学费收入。到2019年，该学院面临严重的预算问题和裁员。
USC is not alone in seeing dollar signs in master’s degrees. Fueled by generous federal loans for graduate studies and education inflation, elite universities are offering extraordinarily expensive master’s degree programs in which students are unlikely to earn enough after graduation to pay down their student loans. The schools get their tuition, and taxpayers are on the hook if students default on their loans.
南加州大学并不是唯一一个在硕士学位上看到金钱迹象的大学。在慷慨的联邦研究生贷款和学历贬值的推动下，精英大学正在提供极其昂贵的硕士学位课程，学生在毕业后不太可能挣到足够的钱来偿还他们的学生贷款。学校可以拿到学费，如果学生拖欠贷款，纳税人就得为此买单。
What makes this especially infuriating is that even while the school was sticking many financially strapped students with hefty debt for their social work degrees, it was currying favor with U.S. Representative Karen Bass, whose Los Angeles district encompasses the university, by giving her a full scholarship.
尤其让人愤怒的是，尽管该学院让许多经济拮据、负债累累的学生攻读社会工作学位，却在讨好美国众议员巴斯，给她全额奖学金。巴斯所在的洛杉矶选区包含南加州大学。
Over the years, USC has climbed in the national rankings of colleges and universities, raised billions of dollars, built big new buildings and vastly expanded its research. Yet along the way, the university has too often lost its way, putting fundraising, prestige and rankings above the fundamentals of academia and the well-being of its students. It shouldn’t take a scandal or an expose for USC — and, frankly, other universities — to confront the question of whether they have sacrificed their values in pursuit of growth and tuition dollars.
多年来，南加州大学在全美高校排名中不断攀升，筹集了数十亿美元资金，建造了新的大型建筑，并极大地扩展了其研究范围。然而，在这一过程中，这所大学经常迷失方向，把筹资、声望和排名置于学术基础和学生福祉之上。南加州大学——坦白地说，还有其他大学——不应该通过丑闻或曝光来面对他们是否为了追求增长和学费收入而牺牲了自己价值观的问题。