Once globally preeminent, U.S. universities are sliding into decline

曾经在全球范围内享有盛誉的美国大学正在滑向衰落

The nation was distracted by other things when a quiet warning sounded: Support was diminishing for American academic research that had led to breakthroughs and innovation.

当一个无声的警告响起时，这个国家被其他事情分散了注意力：对导致突破和创新的美国学术研究的支持正在减少。

That familiar-sounding worry came not this year, but near the end of World War II, in a pivotal government study by the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development.

这种听起来很熟悉的担忧不是在今年出现的，而是在第二次世界大战即将结束时，在战时科学研究与发展办公室的一项关键政府研究中出现的。

The response then: infusions of government cash that would propel the U.S. higher education system into international preeminence over the subsequent decades.

当时的反应是：注入政府资金，这将推动美国高等教育系统在接下来的几十年里在国际上占据领先地位。

American colleges and universities rose to the ranks of the best in the world. They attracted top scholars who won a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes. They helped drive the innovation economy. As trade deficits beset other industries, education became the sixth-largest U.S. services export. At their peak enrollment, international students brought in more than $40 billion a year.

美国的学院和大学上升到世界上最好的行列。他们吸引了获得诺贝尔奖的顶尖学者。他们帮助推动了创新经济。随着贸易逆差困扰其他行业，教育成为美国第六大服务出口。在招生高峰期，国际学生每年带来超过 400 亿美元的收入。

Now, as a new academic year begins, American dominance in higher education globally is incontrovertibly in decline, according to data, international rankings and independent experts.

现在，随着新学年的开始，根据数据、国际排名和独立专家的说法，美国在全球高等教育领域的主导地位无疑正在下降。

The slide has been accelerated by a year and a half of funding cuts, restrictions on international students and curbs on what can be said or taught. But it began before those political challenges, with enrollment declines, lackluster returns on ever-rising prices and public mistrust.

一年半的资金削减、对国际学生的限制以及对言论或教学的限制加速了这一下滑。但它在这些政治挑战之前就开始了，入学人数下降，物价不断上涨的回报乏善可陈，公众不信任。

“It takes a while for all of these problems to trickle down, but they are beginning to trickle down,” said Eric Mlyn, a faculty fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University who studies academic freedom.

“杜克大学凯南伦理研究所研究学术自由的研究员埃里克-姆林（Eric Mlyn）说：”所有这些问题都需要一段时间才能逐渐显现，但它们已经开始逐渐显现。

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Top scholars are leaving. Fewer international students are coming. U.S. universities are slipping in international rankings. And American universities have failed to keep pace as other countries pour resources into their higher education systems.

顶尖学者要走了。来的国际学生越来越少。美国大学的国际排名正在下滑。当其他国家向其高等教育系统投入资源时，美国大学未能跟上步伐。

Chinese institutions, for example, have increased their production of graduates with doctoral degrees much faster than American ones in the critical fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Rather than expanding, U.S. doctoral programs are now admitting fewer candidates or have stopped accepting new applicants altogether.

例如，在科学、技术、工程和数学等关键领域，中国院校培养博士学位毕业生的速度远远快于美国。美国博士项目现在招收的候选人越来越少，或者已经完全停止接受新的申请人，而不是扩大。

This has myriad impacts on all Americans. Falling behind in research imperils the nation’s economic competitiveness, for instance. And attracting fewer international learners — and the subsidies they represent to universities’ bottom lines — is already affecting the services and majors available to domestic students, and could increase the cost.

这对所有美国人都有无数的影响。例如，在研究方面落后会危及国家的经济竞争力。吸引更少的国际学生--以及他们对大学底线的补贴--已经影响到国内学生可以获得的服务和专业，并可能增加成本。

So dire has the situation become that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences hosted a discussion about it in June. The title: “Is the U.S. Losing Its Edge as a Global Education Leader?”

情况变得如此糟糕，以至于美国艺术与科学院在6月份就此举办了一场讨论。标题： “美国是否正在失去全球教育领导者的优势？”

The answer is yes, said Mlyn, who was one of the panelists. “There are so many issues threatening America’s global standing,” he said.

答案是肯定的，小组成员之一姆林说。“他说：”有太多问题威胁着美国的全球地位。

The number of U.S. universities in the top 100 of the QS World University Rankings has fallen from 31 to 26 in the past 10 years, while Chinese universities are moving up. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings still puts seven U.S. universities among the top 10. But the smallest number ever made the top 500, while Asian universities rose.

在过去的10年里，进入QS世界大学排名前100名的美国大学数量从31所下降到26所，而中国大学正在上升。泰晤士报高等教育世界大学排名仍然将七所美国大学列入前十名。但进入前500名的人数最少，而亚洲大学却有所上升。

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International standings like these “are the global symbol for geopolitical strength on the world stage, and they’re very influential in people’s decision about where to study,” said Phil Baty, the Times Higher’s chief global affairs officer. “If you start seeing the slow diminution of rankings, that means you’re becoming less attractive to that talent. Then it could be a really serious downward spiral.”

《泰晤士报》首席全球事务官菲尔-巴蒂（Phil Baty）说，像这样的国际排名 “是世界舞台上地缘政治实力的全球象征，对人们决定去哪里学习有很大影响”。“如果你开始看到排名慢慢下降，那就意味着你对人才的吸引力正在下降。那么这可能会是一个非常严重的螺旋式下降”。

In the next Times Higher rankings — due out Sept. 30 — U.S. institutions continue to fall in comparative measures of reputation and research quality, Baty said.

贝蒂说，在将于9月30日公布的下一次更高排名中，美国机构在声誉和研究质量的比较指标上继续下降。

“It does feel like a tipping point,” he said.

“他说：”这确实感觉像是一个转折点。

Universities in China annually turn out nearly 50 percent more Ph.D. graduates in science, technology, engineering and math than U.S. universities do, according to the National Science Foundation, or NSF. That’s partly a reflection of China’s larger population. But the pace of STEM Ph.D. production is also rising much more quickly in China than in the United States. It doubled in the 15 years ending in 2022, while the number of U.S. Ph.D. graduates in STEM rose two-fifths as fast, or by 41 percent, an analysis by fDi Intelligence found.

根据美国国家科学基金会（NSF）的数据，中国大学每年培养的科学、技术、工程和数学领域的博士毕业生比美国大学高出近50%。这在一定程度上反映了中国人口众多。但是STEM博士的步伐中国的产量也比美国快得多。在截至 2022 年的 15 年里，这一数字翻了一番，而美国博士人数fDi Intelligence 的一项分析发现，STEM 专业毕业生的增长速度快了五分之二，即 41%。

Chinese universities now hold seven of the top 10 places in the Leiden Rankings from the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University, which ranks institutions based on the number of journal articles published by their faculties — a seemingly arcane but consequential measure of academic productivity in which Harvard has fallen from first in the world to third.

在莱顿大学科学技术研究中心（Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University）发布的莱顿排名中，中国大学现在占据了前十名中的七个席位。该中心根据院校发表的期刊文章数量对院校进行排名——这是一个看似神秘但意义重大的学术生产力衡量标准，哈佛大学已从世界第一跌至第三。

Researchers in China produced 28 percent of English language articles about artificial intelligence, worldwide, between 2018 and 2023, compared with 16 percent by scholars in the United States, according to the Emerging Technology Observatory at Georgetown University.

根据乔治敦大学（Georgetown University）新兴技术观察站（Emerging Technology Observatory at Georgetown University）的数据，2018 年至 2023 年间，中国研究人员撰写了全球 28% 的人工智能英文文章，而美国学者撰写的这一比例为 16%。

While they may have produced less research during that period than their Chinese counterparts, American scholars still ranked higher on how often their work was cited by others, the NSF noted — an important indication of its relative quality. And some of the most prestigious U.S. universities were still holding their own at the top of those most recent international rankings.

美国国家科学基金会指出，虽然他们在此期间的研究成果可能比中国同行少，但美国学者在其他人引用他们的工作的频率方面仍然排名更高——这是其相对质量的一个重要指标。一些最负盛名的美国大学仍然在最近的国际排名中名列前茅。

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But the Trump administration has since cut billions of dollars in research funding, resulting in layoffs and uncertainty. And while many of those initial cuts were restored by courts, federal agencies have slowed the awarding of new grants.

但特朗普执政此后削减了数十亿美元的研究经费，导致裁员和不确定性。虽然法院恢复了许多最初的削减，但联邦机构已经放慢了新拨款的发放速度。

The administration’s 2027 budget request would reduce spending on the NSF and National Institutes of Health by 55 percent and 13 percent, respectively, according to the nonpartisan law and policy organization the Brennan Center for Justice, and shift some of what money remains away from universities.

据无党派法律和政策组织布伦南司法中心（Brennan Center for Justice）称，政府提出的2027年预算请求将把美国国家科学基金会（NSF）和美国国立卫生研究院（National Institutes of Health）的支出分别减少55%和13%，并将部分剩余资金从大学转移出去。

“We have the success of the postwar period to show that the current model works pretty well,” said Steven Durlauf, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, referring to the historic role of the federal government in supporting academic research. Today, with funding uncertainty at least and cuts at worst, said Durlauf, “we’re on a suicidal trajectory.”

“芝加哥大学哈里斯公共政策学院（University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy）经济学家史蒂文-杜劳夫（Steven Durlauf）说：”战后时期的成功表明，目前的模式非常有效。杜劳夫说，如今，资金至少存在不确定性，最坏的情况下还会削减，“我们正走上一条自杀的轨道”。

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Blaming the interruptions in funding that have already occurred, top research universities have admitted 15 percent fewer doctoral students for the coming fall, including in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, according to the Association of American Universities, or AAU. Many didn’t take any new doctoral students at all.

根据美国大学协会（AAU）的数据，顶尖研究型大学明年秋季招收的博士生减少了15%，包括人工智能和量子计算等领域的博士生，这归咎于已经发生的资金中断。许多人根本没有招收任何新的博士生。

Doctoral programs train scientists to teach and conduct research in fields including technology and treatments for medical problems.

博士项目培养科学家在包括医学问题的技术和治疗方法在内的领域进行教学和研究。

“America faces the alarming prospect of losing an entire generation of scientific talent,” the AAU says.

“AAU说：”美国正面临着失去整整一代科学人才的令人担忧的前景。

Just after the start of the second Trump administration, about half of Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers in bioengineering said they were likely to leave academia, according to a survey by researchers at Harvard, MIT and elsewhere. The proportion who said they’d likely leave the United States was also up.

就在第二届特朗普执政开始后，大约一半的博士。根据哈佛大学、麻省理工学院和其他地方研究人员的一项调查，生物工程领域的学生和博士后研究人员表示，他们可能会离开学术界。表示可能离开美国的比例也有所上升。

Three in four U.S.-based researchers overall have considered leaving the country, according to another survey, by the journal Nature, conducted before some of the Trump administration’s harshest actions against universities and colleges.

根据《自然》杂志在特朗普政府对大学和学院采取一些最严厉行动之前进行的另一项调查，四分之三的美国研究人员曾考虑离开美国。

Forty-five percent of faculty in yet another survey, by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said they had considered jobs outside of higher education in the last three years, and a third that they had considered opportunities outside of the United States. Most said changes in state or federal policy were instrumental in their job searches.

在哈佛大学教育研究生院的研究人员进行的另一项调查中，45%的教师表示，他们在过去三年中考虑过高等教育以外的工作，三分之一的教师表示，他们考虑过美国以外的机会。大多数人表示，州或联邦政策的变化对他们的求职很有帮助。

At least 85 scholars have moved to China since the start of 2024, CNN reporting found, including several at the top of their fields — most recently, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Omar Yaghi, who is leaving the University of California, Berkeley, for Tsinghua University in China to help establish an institute that will use AI to speed up the development of new materials.

美国有线电视新闻网 (CNN) 的报道发现，自 2024 年初以来，至少有 85 名学者移居中国，其中包括几位各自领域的顶尖学者——最近，诺贝尔奖获得者化学家奥马尔·亚吉 (Omar Yaghi) 即将离开加州大学伯克利分校，前往中国清华大学帮助建立一个利用人工智能加速新材料开发的研究所。

American scientists collectively submitted 32 percent more applications for jobs abroad in the first quarter of last year than in the same period the year before, according to a separate analysis by Nature.

根据《自然》杂志的另一项分析，去年第一季度，美国科学家提交的海外工作申请比去年同期增加了 32%。

U.S. universities “have been magnets for talent because they have provided an exchange: ‘Come build your research lab at our university — you’ll get all these talented students, we have labs, we have government funding,’ ” said Kumar Garg, a science and technology adviser in the Obama administration and now president of Renaissance Philanthropy, which helps channel private funds to research. “If that bundle starts unraveling, this no longer works.”

美国大学 “一直是人才的磁石，因为它们提供了一个交流平台： 奥巴马政府的科技顾问、现任文艺复兴慈善组织（Renaissance Philanthropy）主席库马尔-加格（Kumar Garg）说：'来我们大学建立你的研究实验室--你会得到所有这些有才华的学生，我们有实验室，我们有政府资助。“如果捆绑包开始解体，这就不起作用了。”

Meanwhile, the flow of international students coming to the United States has slowed dramatically, with as much as a 22 percent decline in the number who arrived last summer compared with the summer before.

与此同时，来美国的国际学生流量急剧放缓，去年夏天来美国的人数比前年夏天减少了22%。

Nearly six in 10 universities and colleges say the number of applications they received from international students fell again for the academic year about to start, a survey by the Institute of International Education found. More than 40 percent reported a “substantial” decline in applications for graduate study. NAFSA: Association of International Educators and the education technology company JB International project a drop of 111,000 international students this fall, costing the economy $3.4 billion.

国际教育研究所的一项调查发现，近十分之六的大学和学院表示，在即将开始的学年中，他们收到的国际学生申请数量再次下降。超过 40% 的人表示研究生申请数量 “大幅 ”下降。NAFSA：国际教育工作者协会和教育技术公司JB国际预计今年秋天将减少111,000名国际学生，给经济造成34亿美元的损失。

“The U.S. has thrived because the world’s smartest people flock to the United States, and that is definitely stalling,” said Baty, of the Times Higher.

“《泰晤士报》的贝蒂说：”美国之所以繁荣，是因为世界上最聪明的人都涌向美国，而这绝对是一种阻碍。

This slide follows federal delays in issuing new student visas, the detentions and deportations of international students for their political activism and screenings of international student applicants’ social media posts.

这张幻灯片是在联邦政府延迟发放新学生签证、因政治活动而拘留和驱逐出境留学生以及对留学生申请人社交媒体帖子的审查之后发布的。

Even before those steps, however — as the price of U.S. higher education continued to rise — “cost was a larger reason” for international students reconsidering coming to the United States, said Rona Aydin, who works with them as founder of the international college admissions counseling company Oriel Admissions.

然而，国际大学招生咨询公司 Oriel Admissions 的创始人罗娜-艾丁（Rona Aydin）说，即使在采取这些措施之前，随着美国高等教育价格的不断上涨，“费用也是国际学生重新考虑来美国的一个更大原因”。

Now, said Aydin, prospective applicants who previously would have only considered American universities “are also thinking about backup countries. That’s a shift.”

艾丁说，现在，以前只会考虑美国大学的潜在申请者 “也在考虑后备国家。这是一个转变”。

Yet another rule, restricting international students to four years in the United States, takes effect Sept. 15. Four years is less time than is needed to complete many Ph.D. and other academic programs, and the new limit is likely to further reduce the supply of international students coming to the country.

另一项限制国际学生在美国居住四年的规定将于9月15日生效。四年的时间比完成许多博士学位和其他学术项目所需的时间要短，新的限制可能会进一步减少来中国的国际学生的供应。

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Also, while it’s still too early to see their effects, new limits on federal loans for graduate study will leave about one-fourth of domestic graduate-school borrowers unable to continue to pay for their educations, projections suggest.

此外，虽然现在看到其效果还为时过早，但预测显示，对联邦研究生学习贷款的新限制将使约四分之一的国内研究生院借款人无法继续支付教育费用。

In some states, faculty have faced constraints on what they can teach and threats to protections such as tenure.

在一些州，教师面临着他们所能教授的内容的限制和终身教职等保护的威胁。

Institutional autonomy at U.S. universities has eroded by 50 percent in the decade ending in 2025, and especially since the first Trump administration, according to the Academic Freedom Index produced by researchers at Germany’s University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

根据德国埃尔兰根-纽伦堡大学（University of Erlangen-Nuremberg）研究人员编制的学术自由指数（Academic Freedom Index），在截至2025年的十年间，尤其是自特朗普第一届政府以来，美国大学的机构自主权已经被侵蚀了50%。

“The decline in institutional autonomy in the United States stands out as a case of fast and steep deterioration,” the researchers wrote in March.

“研究人员在三月份写道：”美国机构自主权的下降是一个快速而急剧恶化的例子。

Tenure can keep scientists from leaving academia for better-paying jobs in private industry, as more may now do, said Kenan Sahin, author of “American Educational Excellence,” a book about the strengths of the U.S. education system, and a life member of the governing board at MIT, which he attended as an international student before founding what would become a multibillion-dollar tech company.

《美国教育卓越》（American Educational Excellence）一书的作者、麻省理工学院管理委员会的终身成员凯南-沙欣（Kenan Sahin）说，终身职位可以阻止科学家离开学术界，到私营企业从事薪酬更高的工作，而现在更多的科学家可能会这样做。

Those researchers without tenure who remain at universities may stick to “safe” ideas rather than seek out potential breakthroughs and risk failure, Sahin said.

沙欣说，那些没有终身教职但仍留在大学的研究人员可能会坚持 “安全 ”的想法，而不是寻求潜在的突破和失败的风险。

Seventy percent of Americans now say higher education in the United States is going in the wrong direction, up from 56 percent in 2020, according to Pew. Adults who went to college are more likely to say this than those who didn’t.

根据皮尤的数据，70%的美国人现在表示美国的高等教育正朝着错误的方向发展，高于2020年的56%。上过大学的成年人比没上过大学的成年人更有可能这么说。

That falloff in confidence began before the current political attacks and is largely because of people’s skepticism about what they’re getting for their money, Pew’s and other surveys show.

皮尤研究中心和其他调查显示，这种信心的下降始于当前的政治攻击之前，很大程度上是因为人们对自己的钱能得到什么持怀疑态度。

The United States spends among the most in the world on higher education, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD. But it ranks 15th and 17th, respectively, in the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds who have degrees, depending on whether their parents did or didn’t go to college. That’s down from second overall 20 years ago.

根据经济合作与发展组织（OECD）的数据，美国是世界上高等教育支出最多的国家之一。但在 25 至 34 岁拥有学位的人群中，它分别排在第 15 位和第 17 位，这取决于他们的父母是否上过大学。这比 20 年前的第二名有所下降。

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The impact of these many intersecting trends is already underway.

这些许多交叉趋势的影响已经开始。

There have been more than 320 instances of college and university layoffs, program cuts, department eliminations and closings since January 2024, according to the database CollegeCuts, which tracks this. Even Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences is running a $350 million deficit, which it attributes partly to an increased federal tax on its endowment.

根据跟踪此事的数据库 CollegeCuts 的数据，自 2024 年 1 月以来，已有 320 多起学院和大学裁员、项目削减、部门取消和关闭的案例。就连哈佛大学文理学院也出现了 3.5 亿美元的赤字，部分原因是联邦对其捐赠基金征收了更高的税收。

“Universities went through a multidecade period where they existed in a bipartisan halo, where people might disagree about lots of things, but having cutting-edge universities was a thing everybody could agree on and was willing to invest in,” Garg said.

“加格说：”大学经历了几十年的时期，在两党光环中存在，人们可能会在很多事情上意见不一，但拥有尖端大学是每个人都能达成一致并愿意投资的事情。

U.S. higher education institutions “really are deep wells of talent. Their strengths are real,” he said. But “we should not sleep on the fact that if we don’t adapt and navigate this moment, we’re going to wake up and all of the premier universities won’t be in the United States, and we’ll wonder how that happened.”

美国高等教育机构 “确实是人才的深井。他们的优势是真实存在的，”他说。但是 “我们不应该沉迷于这样一个事实：如果我们不适应和驾驭这一时刻，我们一觉醒来，所有的一流大学都将不在美国，我们会想知道这是怎么发生的”。

Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Signal.

请拨打 212-678-7556、jmarcus@hechingerreport.org 或 Signal 上的 jpm.82 联系作家 Jon Marcus。

This story about threats to U.S. higher education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

这个关于美国高等教育威胁的故事是由Hechinger Report制作的，这是一个非营利的独立新闻机构，专注于教育中的不平等和创新。注册订阅我们的高等教育时事通讯。