经济学人下载:副学士学习计划(ASAP)比平权运动更重要(2)

He is not unusual. Students in the ASAP programme have a three-year graduation rate of 53%— more than double the 25% rate in the rest of the City University of New York (CUNY) system and close to triple the national average. In 2015, when external researchers tested these impressive outcomes by randomly assigning students— the gold standard for social science—they found effects of the same magnitude. The greatest gains went to black and Hispanic students, as well as those receiving Pell grants (most of which go to students with annual family incomes of $20,000 a year or less). Since then, the programme has grown and community-college systems across the country are trying to replicate it.
他这样的情况并不罕见。参加ASAP项目的学生的三年毕业率为53%——是其他纽约城市大学（CUNY）体系下25%毕业率的两倍多，接近全国平均水平的三倍。2015年，当外部研究人员通过随机分配学生（社会科学的金标准）来测试这些令人印象深刻的结果时，他们发现了相同规模的结果。黑人和西班牙裔学生获得最大的收益，以及那些获得佩尔助学金的学生（其中大多数是家庭年收入不到20000美元的学生）。从那时起，这个项目不断发展，全国的社区大学体系都在努力复制它。

In New York the average cost of the additional supports amount to $3,500 per student. But such schemes benefit college finances too, by increasing their revenue. Georgia State University’s programme to provide micro-grants, which began in 2012, seemed to boost both graduation rates and university finances. “That’s actually a big driver of this completion movement [because] enrolments are not going up,” says Patrick Methvin of the Gates Foundation, which has funded research in the field. “The economics on this are going from nice to necessary.” Though not small, the cost also looks like a pittance compared with many ideas to alleviate intergenerational poverty. A child born poor who gets just a high-school degree has a 50% chance of remaining in poverty as an adult; with a college degree, the chances decline to 17%.
在纽约，额外资助的平均费用总计为每个学生3500美元。但这样的计划也有利于大学的财政，增加他们的收入。乔治亚州立大学从2013年起，开始提供小额赠款的计划，似乎既提高了毕业率，又增加了大学的财政。对这一领域进行资助的盖茨基金会的帕特里克•梅尔文表示：“这实际上是这一完后大学学业的一个重要推动因素，因为入学率不会上升。”。“这方面的经济状况正在从良好变成必要。”尽管成本不小，但与许多缓解代际贫困的想法相比，成本似乎也微乎其微。出生贫困且只获得高中学历的孩子有50%的几率在成年后仍然处于贫困中；而拥有大学学历的贫困的孩子在成年后依旧贫困的几率则下降到17%。