2020年经济学人 副学士学习计划(ASAP)比平权运动更重要(3)（在线收听）

More evidence is accumulating to show that the approach works beyond New York. Starting in 2015, three community colleges in Ohio imported the ASAP model, with some modifications (such as offering money for petrol rather than for the subway). A randomised controlled trial by MDRC, a research outfit, found it nearly doubled the chances of completing degrees (35% compared with 19% in the control group). Two community colleges in West Virginia are set to try the system next. “We’re quite pleased to see that the model has been attempted in other places, and the numbers tend to look good too,” says Félix Matos Rodríguez, the chancellor of the CUNY system.

有更多的证据表明，这种方法在纽约以外的其他地方也十分奏效。从2015年开始，俄亥俄州的三个社区大学引入了ASAP模型，并加以改进（比如资助购买汽油，而不是资助乘坐地铁）。一个研究团队MDRC进行了一项随机对照实验发现，完成学位的几率几乎增加了一倍（35%，而对照组为19%）。下一步，西弗吉尼亚州的两所社区大学将尝试这一体系。纽约城市大学体系的校长费利克斯·马托斯·罗德里格斯说：“我们很高兴地看到，其他地方已经在尝试这个模型，而且数据看起来也不错。”。

Perhaps the strongest corroboration that the ingredients are indeed right comes from Chicago, where a similar programme has improved the lot of students in the local community-college system. One Million Degrees (OMD), a project started in 2012, provides tutoring, professional development and cash grants to qualifying students: 80% of them black and Hispanic, 90% qualifying for Pell grants and 60% first-generation students. It is similar to the New York programme because, “if you really ask students what they need and observe what the challenges are”, you arrive in a similar place, says Paige Ponder, the organisation’s CEO. Initial results of a randomised controlled trial conducted by the University of Chicago Poverty Lab of 4,000 applicants found that participants were 35% likelier to persist through the first year of college. Talk to the students in the programme, and you find that no single element boosts their chances of finishing university as much as the whole cocktail.

也许这些来自芝加哥的正确的要素是最有力的证据，在那里进行的一个类似的项目改善了当地社区大学体系的学生生活。2012年开展了一个One Million Degrees (OMD)的项目，旨在为符合条件的学生提供辅导、职业发展以及现金资助：其中80%的学生是黑人以及西班牙裔，90%的学生符合Pell助学金的条件，60%是第一代学生。它和纽约的项目相似，因为该组织的首席执行官Paige Ponder表示：“如果你真正去问学生需要什么，你会观察到他们在面临哪些挑战。”芝加哥大学贫困实验室对4000名申请者进行的随机对照实验的初步结果表明，参与者坚持通过大学第一年的可能性要高出35%。与参与项目的学生进行交谈，你会发现没有单独的因素会比所有元素混合起来更能提高他们完成大学学业的几率。

This well-tested, cost-effective scheme has largely escaped national attention. To many, the whole question of equity in American universities can be reduced simply to the racial make-up of the Ivy League institutions. Besides ignoring the incomes of students at those colleges, who tend to be rich whatever their race and colour, this also assigns central importance to the controversial affirmative-action policies of highly selective universities. Although the share of black students attending Harvard is symbolically important, the situation of those happy few is divorced from the continued social immobility among successive cohorts of black students. Endless debate about affirmative action—which could soon wind up before the Supreme Court yet again—is a diversion from a less controversial method that works.

这一经过充分检验、成本效益高的计划在很大程度上没有受到国家的关注。对许多人来说，美国大学的公平问题可以简单地归结为常春藤盟校的种族构成。除了忽视那些大学学生的收入，不管他们的种族和肤色如何，他们往往都很富有，这也使得高选择性大学的有争议的平权行动政策显得尤为重要。尽管在哈佛上学的黑人学生所占的比例具有重要的象征意义，但那些少数快乐的人的处境却脱离了一批一批的黑人学生群体中持续的社会静止状态。关于平权行动的无休止的辩论——可能很快再次在最高法院结束——这是对一种不那么有争议的有效方法的转移。