中国大学学历只值300块?

Value of a Chinese College Degree: $44?

美国大学生正面临毕业后就业市场低迷的痛苦，而在一个看起来似乎不太可能的地方也有着同样的情况：中国。

American college students facing the misery of an anemic post-graduation job market have company in an unlikely-seeming place: China.

《新京报》22日的一篇报道援引中国一位高级劳动研究员上周末公布的数据说，金融危机像突如其来的暴风扫荡全球，中国似乎凭着强劲的增长平安地渡过了这场危机，然而，中国大学毕业生平均起薪每月只比农民工高300元，约45美元。

Despite entering a robust economy that seemed to weather the financial crisis as if were it a middling squall, China’s college graduates on average make only 300 yuan, or roughly $44, more per month than the average Chinese migrant worker, according to statistics cited over the weekend by a top Chinese labor researcher and reported today by the Beijing Times. 

根据蔡昉的计算，从2003年以来，大学毕业生平均起薪保持在每月1500元左右。据《新京报》报道，蔡昉说，但同期内农民工的月工资由700元跃升至1200元。

By Mr. Cai’s calculations, college graduates have consistently earned around 1,500 yuan a month since 2003. Migrant workers, meanwhile, have seen their monthly wages rise from an average of 700 yuan to 1,200 yuan over roughly the same time period, MR. Cai said, according to the Beijing Times.

近年来，中国面临大学毕业生过多的情况，很大程度上是由于过去十年内大学录取比例上升，导致大学生数量每年以30%的增幅迅速膨胀。大量应届毕业生面临失业是导致平均工资数据形势不佳的主要因素──2008届近600万毕业生约有三分之一未能在毕业后一年内找到工作。同时，制造业和建筑业用工短缺使农民工对薪水的要求越来越高。

China has faced a surfeit of college graduates in recent years, thanks in large part to anenrollment boom that has seen the university student population swell by as much as 30% year-to-year over the last decade. High levels of unemployment among recent graduates—an estimated one-third of the country’s 5.6 million 2008 graduates failed to find work in their first year out of school—are a major drag on the average wage figures. Meanwhile, labor shortages in manufacturing and construction have enabled migrant workers to demand higher and higher wages.

在新闻门户网站搜狐网这篇报道吸引的1800条评论中，很多人正发出了这样的疑问。有些读者将这则新闻看做某种反共产党的讽刺（其中一位读者写道，我们的社会进步了，不再是学历决定社会地位了），而大部分人则对大学教育的价值冷嘲热讽，其中一位读者建议，如果你考不上全国前五十所大学，干脆就不要去上学了。

In the nearly 1,800 comments the report has attracted at the Chinese news portal Sohu, that’s precisely what many are doing. While some readers took the news with a certain post-Communist irony (“Our society has made progress–no longer does a diploma determine social status,” wrote one), the vast majority were cynical about the value of a college education. “If you don’t test into one the top 50 universities, don’t bother doing to school,” one reader advised. “It’s useless.”

中国大学的学历真的这么一文不值吗？蔡昉说，并非如此。和葡萄酒一样，大多数大学生的薪水会随着时间大幅提高。但蔡昉说，负激励效应已经开始出现苗头，尤其是工薪阶层家庭的学生，他们觉得学费和工资损失的代价太大。

Are Chinese degrees really so worthless? Not necessarily, according to Mr. Cai. Like wine, the wages of most college graduates improve significantly over time. But, Mr. Cai said, myopia is already starting to set in, particularly for working-class students for whom the combination of tuition and lost wages can seem too large a sacrifice.