每天一篇经济学人 | Education in America 美国的教育（20

Affirmative action in American college admissions may be about to end. On October 31st the Supreme Court heard two cases in which lawyers argued that the current practice—which allows universities to favour applicants of some races over others—violates civil-rights laws and the constitution. Judging by the sceptical questioning of the conservative justices, who thanks to Donald Trump now command a majority, the question is not whether such preferences will be restricted, but whether they will survive at all.

美国大学招生中的平权法可能即将结束。10月31日，最高法院审理了两起案件，在这两起案件中，律师们辩称，目前允许大学优先考虑某些种族的申请者的做法违反了民权法和宪法。由于唐纳德•特朗普的缘故，保守派法官如今掌握了多数席位，从他们的怀疑质疑来看，问题不在于这些优待是否会受到限制，而在于这些优待是否会继续存在下去。

For more than 40 years the court had allowed some positive discrimination. But it did so with discomfort. Too-obvious tactics like racial quotas, or awarding points for skin colour, were ruled excessive. The compromise was to consider race as one part of “holistic admissions” in a way that made its weight hard to discern. In 2003 Justice Sandra Day O’Connor declared the practice ought to be time-limited, expecting it to be unnecessary 25 years from then. If the court rules as expected in June 2023, five years ahead of Ms O’Connor’s schedule, there will be some sorrow, but hardly the same backlash as met the overturning of the right to abortion in Roe v Wade. Surveys show that majorities of African-Americans, Californians, Democrats and Hispanics all oppose the use of race in college admissions (and in other areas). The demise of this unpopular scheme offers a chance to build something better.

40多年来，法院允许了一些积极的歧视。但这样做带来了不适。太过明显的策略，如种族配额，或根据肤色评分，都被裁定过分。折衷方案是将种族作为“整体评估录取”的一部分，在某种程度上使其重要性难以辨别。2003年，桑德拉·戴·奥康纳法官宣布，这种做法应该有时间限制，预计25年后就没有必要了。如果最高法院在2023年6月(比奥康纳的时间表提前5年)做出预期的裁决，将会有些悲伤，但不会像罗伊诉韦德案中推翻堕胎权那样受到强烈反对。调查显示，大多数非裔美国人、加州人、民主党人和西班牙裔美国人都反对在大学招生(以及其他领域)中考虑种族因素。这个不受欢迎的计划的废止提供了一个建设更好的计划的机会。

A diversity of backgrounds in elite institutions is a desirable goal. In pursuing it, though, how much violence should be done to other liberal principles—fairness, meritocracy, the treatment of people as individuals and not avatars for their group identities? At present, the size of racial preferences is large and hard to defend. The child of two college-educated Nigerian immigrants probably has more advantages in life than the child of an Asian taxi driver or a white child born into Appalachian poverty. Such backgrounds are all diverse. But, under the current regime, the first is heavily more favoured than the others.

精英院校的多元化背景是一个理想的目标。然而，在追求这一目标的过程中，对其他自由主义原则，即公平、精英管理、将人们视为个体而非群体身份的化身，应该施加多少“暴力”呢? 目前，种族偏好的规模很大，很难辩护。两个受过大学教育的尼日利亚移民的孩子在生活中可能比一个亚洲出租车司机的孩子或一个出生在阿巴拉契亚贫困地区的白人孩子拥有更多的优势。这样的背景各不相同。但是，在当前的体制下，前者比其他两种更受青睐。

Racial preferences are not, however, the most galling thing about the ultra-selective universities that anoint America’s elite. The legal case against Harvard, one of the universities defending itself before the Supreme Court, has prised open its admissions records to show the scale of unjustified advantage showered upon the already privileged—disproportionately those who are white and wealthy. A startling 43% of white students admitted to Harvard enjoy some kind of non-academic admissions preference: being an athlete, the child of an alumnus, or a member of the dean’s list of special applicants (such as the offspring of powerful people or big donors).

【1】galling 令人恼怒的; 令人感到屈辱的

然而，种族偏好并不是培养美国精英的超级名校最令人恼火的地方。哈佛大学是在最高法院为自己辩护的大学之一，针对它的法律案件公布了它的录取记录，以显示已经享有特权的人(尤其是那些白人和富人)获得的不合理优势的规模。令人吃惊的是，哈佛大学录取的白人学生中有43% 的人享有某种非学术性的录取偏好: 作为一名运动员，校友的孩子，或者院长特殊申请者名单中的一员(比如有权势的人或大捐赠者的后代)。

A cynic could argue that racial balancing works as a virtue-signalling veneer atop a grotesquely unfair system. A study published in 2017 found that most of Harvard’s undergraduates hailed from families in the top 10% of the income distribution. Princeton had more students from the top 1% than the bottom 60%. When this is the case, it seems unfair that it is often minority students—not the trust-funders—who have their credentials questioned. University presidents and administrators who preen about all their diverse classes might look at how Britain—a country of kings, queens, knights and lords—has fostered a university system that is less riven with ancestral privilege.

愤世嫉俗的人可能会说，种族平衡是在一个极其不公平的制度上的一种美德标榜虚饰。2017年发表的一项研究发现，哈佛大学的大多数本科生来自收入分配排名前10%的家庭。普林斯顿大学的前1%学生比后60%的学生多。在这种情况下，受到质疑的往往是少数族裔学生而不是信托基金的资助者，这似乎是不公平的。那些吹嘘其阶层多元化的大学校长和管理人员，或许可以看看英国这个由国王、女王、骑士和勋爵组成的国家是如何培养出一种不那么受到祖先特权影响的大学体系的。

Unfairness in American education will not be fixed by one court ruling. But it will shock a system in need of reform. Legacy admissions should be ended. Colleges claiming that alumni donations would wither without them should look to Caltech, mit and Johns Hopkins—premier institutions that ditched the practice and, as The Economist went to press, still seemed reputable and solvent. Blunt racial preferences will probably need to be replaced in response to the Supreme Court. But a less socially divisive system based on income could take their place. That would do a better job of taking actual disadvantage into account. It would still benefit non-white and non-Asian Americans, because they are more likely to be poorer, but would do so in a racially neutral way.

美国教育的不公平不是一个法院裁决就能解决的。但这将冲击一个需要改革的体系。“传承”录取应该被终止。那些声称没有校友捐款就会衰落的大学，应该看看加州理工学院、麻省理工学院和约翰霍普金斯大学的做法。这些一流的大学抛弃了这种做法，直到《经济学人》付印时，它们仍然声誉良好，有偿付能力。作为对最高法院的回应，直截了当的种族偏好可能需要被取代。但一种基于收入的社会分歧较小的制度可能会取代它们。这样做会更好地考虑到实际的不利因素。它仍然会让非白人和非亚裔美国人受益，因为他们更有可能更穷，但会以一种种族中立的方式来实现。

In some ways, the question of who gets into a handful of elite universities is a distraction from the deeper causes of social immobility in America. Schooling in poorer neighbourhoods was dismal even before covid-19. The long school closures demanded by teachers’ unions wiped out two decades of progress in test scores for nine-year-olds, with hard-up, black and Hispanic children worst affected. Efforts to help the needy should start before birth and be sustained throughout childhood. Nothing the Supreme Court says about the consideration of race in college admissions will affect the more basic problem, that too few Americans from poorer families are sufficiently prepared to apply to college. However the court rules, that is a debate America needs to have.

在某种程度上，谁能进入少数精英大学的问题分散了人们对美国社会不流动的深层原因的注意力。即使在新冠肺炎疫情之前，较贫困社区的教育状况也很糟糕。教师工会要求的长期关闭学校，抹掉了9岁儿童20年来在考试成绩方面取得的进步，其中贫困的黑人和西班牙裔儿童受到的影响最为严重。帮助穷人的努力应该从出生前开始，并在整个儿童时期持续下去。最高法院关于大学招生中考虑种族因素的任何说法都不会影响更基本的问题，即极少有来自贫困家庭的美国人做好了充分的准备申请大学。无论法院如何裁决，这都是美国需要进行的辩论。