為什么窮人的孩子更難以完成大學學業(yè)

Who Gets to Graduate?

為什么窮人的孩子更難以完成大學學業(yè)

For as long as she could remember, Vanessa Brewer had her mind set on going to college. The image of herself as a college student appealed to her — independent, intelligent, a young woman full of potential — but it was more than that; it was a chance to rewrite the ending to a family story that went off track 18 years earlier, when Vanessa’s mother, then a high-achieving high-school senior in a small town in Arkansas, became pregnant with Vanessa.

從能夠記事的時候起，凡妮莎·布魯爾(Vanessa Brewer)就抱定了上大學的決心。獨立、睿智、前途無量的女大學生形象對她極富吸引力。但上大學的意義不止于此;它還是一個改寫18年前脫軌的家庭故事大結(jié)局的機會。那一年凡妮莎的媽媽在阿肯色州一個小鎮(zhèn)讀高三，成績出色，可她懷上了凡妮莎。

Vanessa’s mom did better than most teenage mothers. She married her high-school boyfriend, and when Vanessa was 9, they moved to Mesquite, a working-class suburb of Dallas, where she worked for a mortgage company. Vanessa’s parents divorced when she was 12, and money was always tight, but they raised her and her younger brother to believe they could accomplish anything. Like her mother, Vanessa shone in school, and as she grew up, her parents and her grandparents would often tell her that she would be the one to reach the prize that had slipped away from her mother: a four-year college degree.

母親的境遇比大多數(shù)少女媽媽好一些。她嫁給了高中時的男友，凡妮莎9歲那年，一家人搬到了達拉斯的工薪階層郊區(qū)梅斯基特，她在那里的一家抵押貸款公司找到了一份工作。父母在凡妮莎12歲那年離異，家里總是缺錢花，但在凡妮莎和弟弟的成長過程中，父母不斷鼓勵他們，讓他們相信自己能夠依靠奮斗成就一番事業(yè)。像母親一樣，凡妮莎的學習成績非常好。隨著凡妮莎一天天長大，她的父母和祖父母時常對她說，她一定會取得她的媽媽當年錯失的成就：一個四年制大學學位。

There were plenty of decent colleges in and around Dallas that Vanessa could have chosen, but she made up her mind back in middle school that she wanted to attend the University of Texas at Austin, the most prestigious public university in the state. By the time she was in high school, she had it all planned out: She would make her way through the nursing program at U.T., then get a master’s in anesthesiology, then move back to Dallas, get a good job at a hospital, then help out her parents and start her own family. In her head, she saw it like a checklist, and in March 2013, when she received her acceptance letter from U.T., it felt as if she were checking off the first item.

達拉斯市內(nèi)和周圍地區(qū)有很多不錯的高校，凡妮莎完全可以從中選擇一所。不過，早在上初中時，她就下定決心要上德州最負盛名的公立大學——德州大學奧斯汀分校(University of Texas at Austin)。上高中時，她已經(jīng)做好了求學規(guī)劃：首先，她將在德州大學完成高級護理課程，然后攻讀一個麻醉學碩士學位，然后搬回達拉斯，在醫(yī)院找一份好工作，幫助她的父母過上好日子，并組建她自己的家庭。在她的想象中，這項規(guī)劃仿佛是一份夢想清單。2013年3月份，當她收到德州大學錄取通知書的時候，那感覺就像是在第一個夢想上打了勾。

Five months later, Vanessa’s parents dropped her off at her dorm in Austin. She was nervous, a little intimidated by the size of the place, but she was also confident that she was finally where she was meant to be. People had warned her that U.T. was hard. “But I thought: Oh, I got this far,” Vanessa told me. “I’m smart. I’ll be fine.”

5個月后，凡妮莎的父母把她送到奧斯丁分校的宿舍。她有點緊張，諾大的校園讓她多少有點膽怯，但她也充滿了信心，因為她終于跨進這所讓她魂牽夢繞的大學。不少人曾警告她，德州大學的日子很難熬。“但我想：哦，我已經(jīng)走到這一步了，”凡妮莎告訴我。“我很聰明，沒事的。”

And then, a month into the school year, Vanessa stumbled. She failed her first test in statistics, a prerequisite for admission to the nursing program. She was surprised at how bad it felt. Failure was not an experience she was used to. At Mesquite High, she never had to study for math tests; she aced them all without really trying. (Her senior-year G.P.A. was 3.50, placing her 39th out of 559 students in her graduating class. She got a 22 on the ACT, the equivalent of about a 1,030 on the SAT — not stellar, but above average.)

不過，新學年開始一個月后，凡妮莎就栽了個跟頭。她沒能通過第一次統(tǒng)計學測驗，而這恰恰是入讀護理課程的先決條件。她驚訝地發(fā)現(xiàn)，失敗的感覺太糟糕了。這是一種她幾乎從未經(jīng)歷過的體驗。在麥斯奎特中學(Mesquite High)，她總是不費吹灰之力就能在數(shù)學考試中獲得高分。(凡妮莎中學畢業(yè)那年的平均績點[GPA]是3.50，在559名畢業(yè)班學生中位列第39名。她的ACT[美國大學入學考試]成績?yōu)?2分，相當于SAT[學業(yè)能力傾向測驗]的1030分——不算特別優(yōu)異，但高于平均水平。)

Vanessa called home, looking for reassurance. Her mother had always been so supportive, but now she sounded doubtful about whether Vanessa was really qualified to succeed at an elite school like the University of Texas. “Maybe you just weren’t meant to be there,” she said. “Maybe we should have sent you to a junior college first.”

凡妮莎給家里打了一個電話，想尋求一些安慰。媽媽一向非常支持凡妮莎，但這一次，她聽上去似乎懷疑凡妮莎是否真的具備在德州大學這種名校獲得成功的資質(zhì)。“也許你原本就不適合上這所大學，”她說，“也許我們當初應該先送你去上個大專。”

“I died inside when she said that,” Vanessa told me. “I didn’t want to leave. But it felt like that was maybe the reality of the situation. You know, moms are usually right. I just started questioning everything: Am I supposed to be here? Am I good enough?”

“她說這話的時候，我心都死了，”凡妮莎告訴我，“我不想離開，但又覺得現(xiàn)實可能就是這樣。畢竟，媽媽的判斷通常都是正確的。我開始質(zhì)疑一切：我應該到這里來嗎?我是否足夠優(yōu)秀?”

There are thousands of students like Vanessa at the University of Texas, and millions like her throughout the country — high-achieving students from low-income families who want desperately to earn a four-year degree but who run into trouble along the way. Many are derailed before they ever set foot on a campus, tripped up by complicated financial-aid forms or held back by the powerful tug of family obligations. Some don’t know how to choose the right college, so they drift into a mediocre school that produces more dropouts than graduates. Many are overwhelmed by expenses or take on too many loans. And some do what Vanessa was on the verge of doing: They get to a good college and encounter what should be a minor obstacle, and they freak out. They don’t want to ask for help, or they don’t know how. Things spiral, and before they know it, they’re back at home, resentful, demoralized and in debt.

在德州大學，像凡妮莎這種來自低收入家庭、成績優(yōu)異、迫切想獲得一個四年制學位，但在求學過程中陷入困境的學生還有數(shù)千人。在全美各大學，類似的學生更是多達數(shù)百萬。許多人甚至還沒有踏入大學校門就退縮了，要么是被各種復雜的助學金申請表格搞得頭昏腦漲，要么是受到巨大家庭責任的拖累。一些學生不知道如何選擇合適的高校，結(jié)果稀里糊涂地進了一所輟學的學生多于畢業(yè)生的平庸院校。許多學生被各種費用壓得喘不過氣來，或者背負了太多貸款。還有一些學生做了凡妮莎差點就要做的事情：進入一所好大學，碰到一個算不了什么的輕微障礙后，就被嚇壞了。這些學生要么不想尋求幫助，要么不知道如何尋求幫助。隨后，情況急轉(zhuǎn)直下，在他們還沒有反應過來之前，他們就已經(jīng)回家了，充滿忿恨，情緒低落，還背上了債務。

When you look at the national statistics on college graduation rates, there are two big trends that stand out right away. The first is that there are a whole lot of students who make it to college — who show up on campus and enroll in classes — but never get their degrees. More than 40 percent of American students who start at four-year colleges haven’t earned a degree after six years. If you include community-college students in the tabulation, the dropout rate is more than half, worse than any other country except Hungary.

有關大學畢業(yè)率的全美統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)清楚地顯現(xiàn)出兩大趨勢。其一是，大批學生步入大學校門，注冊上課，但從未獲得學位。在四年制大學，有超過40%的美國學生在6年后仍未獲得學位。如果把社區(qū)大學學生包括在內(nèi)，輟學率高達一半以上，比世界上除匈牙利之外的其他所有國家都要糟。

The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t. Or to put it more statistically: About a quarter of college freshmen born into the bottom half of the income distribution will manage to collect a bachelor’s degree by age 24, while almost 90 percent of freshmen born into families in the top income quartile will go on to finish their degree.

第二大趨勢是，如今一個大學生能否順利畢業(yè)，似乎完全取決于一個因素——他或她的父母賺多少錢。更直白的說法是：富家子弟能夠畢業(yè)，而窮人和工薪階層的孩子無法畢業(yè)。從統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)來看，在家庭收入落在收入分布下半部分的大學新生中，大約有四分之一可以在24歲時獲得學士學位。而在家庭收入位居收入分布最高四分之一的大學新生中，近90%將順利完成學位課程。

When you read about those gaps, you might assume that they mostly have to do with ability. Rich kids do better on the SAT, so of course they do better in college. But ability turns out to be a relatively minor factor behind this divide. If you compare college students with the same standardized-test scores who come from different family backgrounds, you find that their educational outcomes reflect their parents’ income, not their test scores. Take students like Vanessa, who do moderately well on standardized tests — scoring between 1,000 and 1,200 out of 1,600 on the SAT. If those students come from families in the top-income quartile, they have a 2 in 3 chance of graduating with a four-year degree. If they come from families in the bottom quartile, they have just a 1 in 6 chance of making it to graduation.

乍一看這些差距，你可能會認為它們主要跟能力有關：富家子弟的SAT成績更出色，所以他們在大學的表現(xiàn)當然更好。但能力僅僅是這道鴻溝背后一個相對次要的因素。如果你比較一下那些標準化考試成績相同，但家庭背景不同的大學生，你就會發(fā)現(xiàn)，他們的教育結(jié)果反映了其父母的收入，而不是他們自身的考試成績。就以凡妮莎這種標準化考試成績還算不錯的學生(在滿分為1600分的SAT考試中，獲得1000到1200分)為例。如果這些學生來自收入分布最高四分之一的家庭，他們獲得四年制大學學位的幾率為三分之二。而如果他們來自收入分布最低四分之一的家庭，其順利畢業(yè)的幾率僅為六分之一。

The good news for Vanessa is that she had improved her odds by enrolling in a highly selective college. Many low-income students “undermatch,” meaning that they don’t attend — or even apply to — the most selective college that would accept them. It may seem counterintuitive, but the more selective the college you choose, the higher your likelihood of graduating. But even among the highly educated students of U.T., parental income and education play a huge role in determining who will graduate on time. An internal U.T. report published in 2012 showed that only 39 percent of first-generation students (meaning students whose parents weren’t college graduates) graduated in four years, compared with 60 percent whose parents both graduated from college. So Vanessa was caught in something of a paradox. According to her academic record, she had all the ability she needed to succeed at an elite college; according to the demographic statistics, she was at serious risk of failing.

對于凡妮莎來說，好消息是，她進入了一所非常難進的大學，由此提升了順利畢業(yè)的幾率。許多低收入家庭的學生“低就”，即他們不上，甚至不申請愿意錄取他們的最難進的大學。一個似乎有點違反直覺的事實是，你選擇的大學越難進，你順利畢業(yè)的可能性反而越高。不過，即使在受過良好教育的德州大學學生當中，父母收入和教育程度也是決定一位學生能否順利畢業(yè)的巨大因素。德州大學2012年發(fā)表的一份內(nèi)部報告顯示，只有39%的第一代大學生(即父母沒上過大學的學生)在4年后順利畢業(yè)，而父母都是大學畢業(yè)生的學生畢業(yè)率達到60%。所以說，凡妮莎似乎陷入了某種悖論。從她的學業(yè)成績看，她擁有在一所名校獲得成功所需的所有能力;而從人口結(jié)構統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)看，她面臨嚴重的失敗風險。

But why? What was standing in her way? This year, for the first time, the University of Texas is trying in a serious way to answer that question. The school’s administrators are addressing head-on the problems faced by students like Vanessa. U.T.’s efforts are based on a novel and controversial premise: If you want to help low-income students succeed, it’s not enough to deal with their academic and financial obstacles. You also need to address their doubts and misconceptions and fears. To solve the problem of college completion, you first need to get inside the mind of a college student.

但為什么呢?究竟是什么障礙擋住她的求學道路?今年，德州大學首次嘗試以一種認真的方式回答這個問題。該校管理者正在迎頭解決凡妮莎這類學生面臨的問題。這種努力基于一個新穎且有爭議性的前提：如果你想幫助低收入學生獲得成功，僅僅應對他們的學術和經(jīng)濟障礙是不夠的。你還需要解決他們的疑慮、誤解和恐懼。要想解決大學畢業(yè)率問題，你首先得進入一位大學生的內(nèi)心世界。

The person at the University of Texas who has been given the responsibility for helping these students succeed is a 56-year-old chemistry professor named David Laude. He is, by all accounts, a very good college professor — he illustrates the Second Law of Thermodynamics with quotations from Trent Reznor and Leonard Cohen and occasionally calls students to the front of the class to ignite balloons filled with hydrogen into giant fireballs. But he was a lousy college student. As a freshman at the University of the South, in Sewanee, Tenn., Laude felt bewildered and out of place, the son of a working-class, Italian-American family from Modesto, Calif., trying to find his way at a college steeped in Southern tradition, where students joined secret societies and wore academic gowns to class. “It was a massive culture shock,” Laude told me. “I was completely at a loss on how to fit in socially. And I was tremendously bad at studying. Everything was just overwhelming.” He spent most of his freshman year on the brink of dropping out.

德州大學把幫助這些學生獲得成功的重任，交給了56歲的化學教授戴維·勞德(David Laude)。勞德是一位人人稱頌的優(yōu)秀教授：他引用音樂人特倫特·雷澤諾(Trent Reznor)和倫納德·科恩(Leonard Cohen)的歌詞來講解熱力學第二定律，偶爾還會把學生叫到教室前點燃充滿氫氣的氣球，形成巨大的火球。但當年上大學時，他可是一位差生。剛步入位于田納西州塞沃尼市的南方大學(University of the South)時，勞德深感惶惑，與周圍環(huán)境格格不入。作為加利福尼亞州莫德斯托市一個意大利裔工薪家庭的孩子，他無法適應這所沉浸于南方傳統(tǒng)的大學——該校學生熱衷于加入各種秘密社團，還喜歡身穿學院袍去上課。“那是一個巨大的文化沖擊，”勞德告訴我，“我完全不知所措，不知道如何適應那里的社交生活。我也極其不擅長學習，似乎什么都應對不了。”大一那年，他差不多都是在輟學邊緣度過的。

But he didn’t drop out. He figured out college, then he figured out chemistry, then he got really good at both, until he wound up, 20 years later, a tenured professor at U.T. teaching Chemistry 301, the same introductory course in which he got a C as a freshman in Sewanee. Perhaps because of his own precarious college experience, Laude paid special attention as a professor to how students were doing in his class. And year after year, he noticed something curious: The distribution of grades in his Chemistry 301 section didn’t follow the nice sweeping bell curve you might expect. Instead, they fell into what he calls a “bimodal distribution.” In each class of 500 students, there would be 400 or so who did quite well, clustered around the A and high-B range. They got it. Then there would be a second cluster of perhaps 100 students whose grades were way down at the bottom — D’s and F’s. They didn’t get it.

但他沒有退學。他適應了大學生活，漸漸掌握了化學的要領，最終在這兩方面都得心應手。20年后，他作為德州大學終身教授，執(zhí)教當年他在塞沃尼讀大一時得了C的入門課程《化學301》?；蛟S是由于親身經(jīng)歷過岌岌可危的大學生活，勞德特別關注班上學生的表現(xiàn)。年復一年，他注意到一個奇特的現(xiàn)象：《化學 301》課程的成績分布并不遵循你可能預期的漂亮的鐘形曲線;相反，它們呈現(xiàn)為他所稱的“雙峰分布”。在每個500名學生的班級中，往往有大約400名學生的成績相當出色，聚集在A和高B區(qū)間。他們開竅了。另外大約100名學生形成第二個集群，他們的成績很差——D和F。他們沒有開竅。

To many professors, this pattern simply represents the natural winnowing process that takes place in higher education. That attitude is especially common in the sciences, where demanding introductory classes have traditionally been seen as a way to weed out weak students. But Laude felt differently. He acknowledged that some of his failing students just weren’t cut out for chemistry, but he suspected that many of them were — that they were smart but confused and a little scared, much as he had been.

在許多教授看來，這種規(guī)律只不過反映了高等教育的自然篩選過程。這種態(tài)度在理科領域特別常見——在這類學科，要求苛刻的入門課程傳統(tǒng)上被視為一種淘汰差生的手段。但勞德不這樣認為。他承認，有些成績不及格的學生的確不具備學化學的資質(zhì)，但他覺得許多所謂的差生其實很聰明，只不過感到困惑，有點害怕，就像當年的他那樣。

To get a better sense of who these struggling students were, Laude started pulling records from the provost’s office. It wasn’t hard to discern a pattern. The students who were failing were mostly from low-income families. Many of them fit into certain ethnic, racial and geographic profiles: They were white kids from rural West Texas, say, or Latinos from the Rio Grande Valley or African-Americans from Dallas or Houston. And almost all of them had low SAT scores — low for U.T., at least — often below 1,000 on a 1,600-point scale.

為了更好地了解這些深陷困境的學生，勞德開始從教務辦公室調(diào)閱他們的檔案，很快就發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個規(guī)律：跟不上學業(yè)的學生多數(shù)來自低收入家庭。其中許多學生符合特定的民族、種族和地理特征：德州西部農(nóng)村地區(qū)的白人，里奧格蘭德河谷的拉丁裔，或者是達拉斯或休斯頓的非洲裔。幾乎所有人的SAT成績都不高，至少按德州大學的標準偏低，往往不到1000分(滿分為1600)。

The default strategy at U.T. for dealing with failing students was to funnel them into remedial programs — precalculus instead of calculus; chemistry for English majors instead of chemistry for science majors. “This, to me, was just the worst thing you could possibly imagine doing,” Laude said. “It was saying, ‘Hey, you don’t even belong.’ And when you looked at the data to see what happened to the kids who were put into precalculus or into nonmajors chemistry, they never stayed in the college. And no wonder. They were outsiders from the beginning.”

德州大學對待跟不上學業(yè)的學生的默認策略是，讓他們上輔導課——微積分預備課，而不是微積分;英語專業(yè)的化學課，而不是理科專業(yè)的化學課。“我覺得，再也想像不出比這種方式更糟糕的對策了，”勞德說。“這就像是在對學生說，‘嘿，你根本就不屬于這里。’數(shù)據(jù)清楚表明，這些被安排學習微積分預備課或非專業(yè)化學課的學生，都沒能在大學里留下來繼續(xù)學業(yè)。這也難怪。他們從一開始就被擋在門外。”

In 1999, at the beginning of the fall semester, Laude combed through the records of every student in his freshman chemistry class and identified about 50 who possessed at least two of the “adversity indicators” common among students who failed the course in the past: low SATs, low family income, less-educated parents. He invited them all to apply to a new program, which he would later give the august-sounding name the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan, or TIP. Students in TIP were placed in their own, smaller section of Chemistry 301, taught by Laude. But rather than dumb down the curriculum for them, Laude insisted that they master exactly the same challenging material as the students in his larger section. In fact, he scheduled his two sections back to back. “I taught my 500-student chemistry class, and then I walked upstairs and I taught this 50-student chemistry class,” Laude explained. “Identical material, identical lectures, identical tests — but a 200-point difference in average SAT scores between the two sections.”

1999年的秋季學期開學伊始，勞德仔細梳理他執(zhí)教的大一化學課的新生檔案，找出大約50名學生，他們至少具有兩項在過去沒有通過這門課的學生中常見的“逆境指標”：低SAT成績、低收入家庭、父母教育程度較低的家庭。他邀請所有這些學生申請參加一個新課程，后來還給它取了一個聽上去像模像樣的名稱：德州跨學科計劃(TIP)。TIP學生將組成一個《化學301》小班，由勞德執(zhí)教。不過，勞德并沒有降低課程難度，而是堅持要求他們掌握跟大班學生一樣的具有挑戰(zhàn)性的內(nèi)容。事實上，他在日程表上安排自己連續(xù)教兩個班。“我先給500個學生的大班上課，然后走到樓上，給這個50名學生的小班授課，”勞德解釋說。“相同的內(nèi)容，相同的講課方式，相同的測驗，但大、小班學生的平均SAT成績存在200分的差距。”

Laude was hopeful that the small classes would make a difference, but he recognized that small classes alone wouldn’t overcome that 200-point SAT gap. “We weren’t naïve enough to think they were just going to show up and start getting A’s, unless we overwhelmed them with the kind of support that would make it possible for them to be successful,” he said. So he supplemented his lectures with a variety of strategies: He offered TIP students two hours each week of extra instruction; he assigned them advisers who kept in close contact with them and intervened if the students ran into trouble or fell behind; he found upperclassmen to work with the TIP students one on one, as peer mentors. And he did everything he could, both in his lectures and outside the classroom, to convey to the TIP students a new sense of identity: They weren’t subpar students who needed help; they were part of a community of high-achieving scholars.

勞德相信小班授課能夠取得積極的效果，但他意識到，僅僅靠小班授課還無法填補SAT成績的200分差距。“我們并沒有天真地認為，他們只要來這個班上課，就會獲得A分的好成績——除非我們向他們提供大量支持，使他們有可能獲得成功，”他說。因此，除了授課之外，勞德還采取了多項輔助策略：他為TIP 學生提供每周兩小時的額外輔導;他給這些學生安排了指導老師，由其與他們保持密切聯(lián)系，一旦他們遇到麻煩或成績落后就及時干預;他還找來一些高年級學生充當TIP學生的同輩導師，為他們提供一對一指導。無論是在課堂上，還是在課外，勞德做了自己能做的一切，向TIP學生傳遞一種全新的身份認同：他們并非需要幫助的差生，而是一個高成就學者社區(qū)的一員。

Even Laude was surprised by how effectively TIP worked. “When I started giving them the tests, they got the same grades as the larger section,” he said. “And when the course was over, this group of students who were 200 points lower on the SAT had exactly the same grades as the students in the larger section.” The impact went beyond Chemistry 301. This cohort of students who, statistically, were on track to fail returned for their sophomore year at rates above average for the university as a whole, and three years later they had graduation rates that were also above the U.T. average.

TIP計劃的效果之好，就連勞德也深感驚訝。“當我開始給他們測驗的時候，他們?nèi)〉昧伺c大班相同的成績，”他說。“這門課結(jié)束后，這群SAT成績低 200分的學生得到了跟大班學生完全等同的分數(shù)。”這項計劃的影響并不限于《化學301》。大二學年來臨時，這群從統(tǒng)計數(shù)字看退學率較高的學生重返校園的比例高于全校平均水平;三年后，他們的畢業(yè)率也高于德州大學平均水平。

Two years ago, Laude was promoted to his current position — senior vice provost for enrollment and graduation management. His official mission now is to improve U.T.’s four-year graduation rate, which is currently languishing at around 52 percent, to 70 percent — closer to the rates at U.T.’s state-university peers in Ann Arbor, Chapel Hill and Charlottesville, Va. — and to achieve this leap by 2017. The best way to do that, Laude decided, was to take the principles and practices that he introduced 15 years earlier with TIP and bring them to the whole Austin campus.

兩年前，勞德晉升至他目前的職位：招生及畢業(yè)管理事務高級副教務長。他現(xiàn)在的正式職責是，將德州大學的四年制本科畢業(yè)率從目前的52%提升至70% ——接近位于安阿伯、教堂山和弗吉尼亞州夏洛茨維爾等地的州立院校同行的水平，并且要爭取最遲在2017年實現(xiàn)這一飛躍。要做到這一點，勞德判定，最好還是借鑒15年前TIP計劃的原則和做法，將其推廣到整個奧斯丁校園。

One complicating factor for administrators at the University of Texas — and, indeed, one reason the school makes for such an interesting case study — is that U.T. has a unique admissions policy, one that is the legacy of many years of legal and legislative battles over affirmative action. After U.T.’s use of race in admissions was ruled unconstitutional by the Fifth Circuit in 1996, the Texas Legislature came up with an alternative strategy to maintain a diverse campus: the Top 10 percent law, which stipulated that students who ranked in the top tenth of their graduating classes in any high school in Texas would be automatically admitted to the campus of their choice in the U.T. system. (As U.T. Austin has grown more popular over the last decade, the criterion for automatic admission has tightened; Texas high-school seniors now have to be in the top 7 percent of their class to earn admission. Automatic admits — Vanessa Brewer among them — make up about three-quarters of each freshman class.)

德州大學管理者不得不面對一個使情況復雜化的因素(其實，這也是該校成為一個如此有意思的案例研究對象的原因之一)，即該校擁有一套獨特的招生政策，這是圍繞平權行動展開的多年法律和立法角力的一項遺產(chǎn)。1996年，在第五巡回法庭裁定德州大學基于種族的招生政策違反憲法之后，德州議會推出另一項旨在維持多元化校園的策略：前10%法則，即在德州任何高中畢業(yè)班排名位于前10%的學生，將被他們在德州大學體系中選擇的院校自動錄取。(隨著德州大學奧斯汀分校在過去十年越來越受歡迎，自動錄取標準已經(jīng)收緊;德州高三學生的成績現(xiàn)在必須進入所在畢業(yè)班的前7%，才能夠被自動錄取。凡妮莎·布魯爾就是其中一位自動錄取生，這些學生現(xiàn)在占到每個新生班大約四分之三的比重。)

At high schools in the wealthier suburbs of Dallas, the top 7 percent of students look a lot like the students anywhere who go on to attend elite colleges. They are mostly well off and mostly white, and most of them rack up high SAT scores. What sets U.T. apart from other selective colleges is that the school also admits the top 7 percent of students from high schools in Brownsville and the Third Ward of Houston, who fit a very different demographic and have, on average, much lower SAT scores.

在達拉斯富裕郊區(qū)的高中，排名前7%的學生看上去跟任何地方隨后進入名校的學生非常相似。他們大多出身富裕家庭，大多是白人，大多數(shù)人獲得了很高的 SAT分數(shù)。德州大學與其他名校的不同之處在于，這所大學還錄取布朗斯維爾和休斯敦第三區(qū)等地高中排名前7%的學生，這些學生來自非常不同的人口群體，其 SAT平均分也低得多。

The good news about these kids, from U.T.’s point of view, is that they are very good students regardless of their test scores. Even if their high schools weren’t as well funded or as academically demanding as schools in other parts of the state, they managed to figure out how to learn, how to study and how to overcome adversity. Laude’s experience teaching Chemistry 301 convinced him that they could succeed and even excel at the University of Texas. But when he looked at the campuswide data, it was clear that these were the students who weren’t succeeding.

從德州大學的視角看，好消息是這些孩子都是非常優(yōu)秀的學生，盡管他們的考試成績差強人意。即使他們就讀的高中在辦學資金和學業(yè)要求方面不如德州其他地區(qū)的高中，但他們依然領悟了如何學習、如何研究、如何克服逆境。執(zhí)教《化學301》的經(jīng)驗使勞德確信，這些學生能夠成功，甚至有望成為德州大學的優(yōu)等生。但是擺在他面前的全校數(shù)據(jù)清楚地顯示，這些學生往往跟不上學業(yè)。

“There are always going to be both affluent kids and kids who have need who come into this college,” Laude said. “And it will always be the case that the kids who have need are going to have been denied a lot of the academic preparation and opportunities for identity formation that the affluent kids have been given. The question is, can we do something for those students in their first year in college that can accelerate them and get them up to the place where they can be competitive with the affluent, advantaged students?”

“來這所大學求學的總有一些是富家子弟，另一些是需要幫助的孩子，”勞德說。“總會出現(xiàn)的情形是，需要幫助的孩子們得不到富裕孩子們被給予的大量學業(yè)準備，以及形成身份認同的機會。問題是，在這些學生進入大學的第一年，我們能不能做些什么事情來幫助他們加速提高，從而能夠與那些得天獨厚的富裕學生展開競爭?”

Before he could figure out how to help those disadvantaged students, though, Laude first had to find out exactly who they were. This was relatively simple to determine in a single chemistry class, but with more than 7,000 students arriving on campus each year, finding the most vulnerable would be a challenge. Laude turned to a newly formed data team in the provost’s office called Institutional Research. Like every big university, U.T. had long had an in-house group of researchers who compiled statistics and issued government-mandated reports, but with Institutional Research, the school had created a data unit for the Nate Silver era, young statisticians and programmers who focused on predictive analytics, sifting through decades’ worth of student data and looking for patterns that could guide the administration’s decision-making on everything from faculty career paths to financial aid.

但在他弄清楚如何幫助這些弱勢學生之前，勞德首先得找出他們是誰。對于一門化學課，這項任務相對簡單，但鑒于每年有超過7000名新生進入校園，找出最脆弱的個體是一大挑戰(zhàn)。勞德求助于教導處新組建的一個名為“院校研究”的數(shù)據(jù)團隊。就像每一所大型綜合大學一樣，德州大學早就擁有一支專門編撰統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)，并按照政府要求發(fā)表報告的研究團隊。但院校研究團隊的獨特之處在于，它使該校具備了一個內(nèi)特·希爾(Nate Silver，著名統(tǒng)計學家)時代的數(shù)據(jù)部門。這群年輕的統(tǒng)計學家和程序員致力于預測分析，從數(shù)十年的海量學生數(shù)據(jù)中尋找規(guī)律，并據(jù)此指引學校管理者的各種決策——從教師隊伍的職業(yè)路徑，到給予學生的經(jīng)濟資助。

Laude wanted something that would help him predict, for any given incoming freshman, how likely he or she would be to graduate in four years. The Institutional Research team analyzed the performance of tens of thousands of recent U.T. students, and from that analysis they produced a tool they called the Dashboard — an algorithm, in spreadsheet form, that would consider 14 variables, from an incoming student’s family income to his SAT score to his class rank to his parents’ educational background, and then immediately spit out a probability, to the second decimal place, of how likely he was to graduate in four years.

勞德想要一種能夠幫助他預測一位新生四年后有多大幾率畢業(yè)的工具。院校研究團隊對近年數(shù)萬名德州大學學生的表現(xiàn)進行了分析，然后根據(jù)分析結(jié)果設計了一種他們稱為“儀表板”(Dashboard)的工具。這種采用電子表格形式的算法考慮14個變量，從一位新生的家庭收入，到他或她的SAT成績，班級名次，再到其父母的教育背景，隨后立即給出一個精確到小數(shù)點后第二位的概率，顯示他或她在四年后有多大幾率順利畢業(yè)。

In the spring of 2013, Laude and his staff sat down with the Dashboard to analyze the 7,200 high-school seniors who had just been admitted to the class of 2017. When they ran the students’ data, the Dashboard indicated that 1,200 of them — including Vanessa Brewer — had less than a 40 percent chance of graduation on time. Those were the kids Laude decided to target. He assigned them each to one or more newly created or expanded interventions. The heart of the project is a portfolio of “student success programs,” each one tailored, to a certain extent, for a different college at U.T. — natural sciences, liberal arts, engineering — but all of them following the basic TIP model Laude dreamed up 15 years ago: small classes, peer mentoring, extra tutoring help, engaged faculty advisers and community-building exercises.

2013年春天，勞德和他的同事開始使用“儀表板”分析7200名剛剛被錄取到2017屆班級的高三學生。輸入這些學生的數(shù)據(jù)后，“儀表板”隨即顯示，大約1200名學生(其中就包括凡妮莎·布魯爾)按時畢業(yè)的幾率不到40%。他們就是勞德決定鎖定的幫助對象。勞德給他們每人安排了一項或多項新創(chuàng)建或擴充的干預措施，這個項目的核心是一組“學生成功方案”。盡管每套方案在一定程度上針對德州大學的不同院系(包括自然科學、人文社會科學和工程技術等)量身定制，但它們都遵循勞德15年前開創(chuàng)的TIP計劃的基本模式：小班教學、同輩指導、額外輔導幫助、密切接觸的指導老師，以及社區(qū)構建活動。

Laude’s most intensive and innovative intervention, though, is the University Leadership Network, a new scholarship program that aims to develop not academic skills but leadership skills. In order to be selected for U.L.N., incoming freshmen must not only fall below the 40-percent cutoff on the Dashboard; they must also have what the financial-aid office calls unmet financial need. In practice, this means that students in U.L.N. are almost all from families with incomes below the national median. (When you enter a family income at that level into the Dashboard, the predicted on-time graduation rate falls even further; for U.L.N. students, Laude estimates, it is more like 20 percent than 40 percent.) The 500 freshmen in U.L.N. perform community service, take part in discussion groups and attend weekly lectures on topics like time management and team building. The lectures have a grown-up, formal feel; students are required to wear business attire. In later years, U.L.N. students will serve in internships on campus and move into leadership positions as mentors or residence-hall advisers or student government officials. In exchange for all this, they receive a $5,000 scholarship every year, paid in monthly increments.

不過，勞德推出的強度最大、也最具創(chuàng)新的干預手段是大學領導力網(wǎng)絡(University Leadership Network，簡稱ULN)，這個全新的獎學金項目旨在開發(fā)學生的領導技能，而不是學業(yè)技能。入選ULN網(wǎng)絡的新生既必須在“儀表板”上低于40%的門檻，還得具有經(jīng)濟援助辦公室所稱的“未獲滿足的經(jīng)濟需要”。在實踐中，這意味著ULN學生幾乎全部來自收入低于全國中位數(shù)的家庭。(當一位新生的家庭收入處于那個層級時，“儀表板”顯示的按時畢業(yè)幾率進一步下降;對于ULN學生來說，勞德估計，這個幾率更有可能是20%，而不是40%。)500名入選 ULN的新生必須從事社區(qū)服務，參與小組討論，每周參加時間管理和團隊建設等主題的講座。這些講座帶有一種成年人的，非常正式的氣氛;學生們必須身著商務裝。在隨后幾年，ULN學生將從事校園實習工作，出任導師、學生宿舍顧問或?qū)W生會干部等領導崗位。這一切的回報是，他們每年獲得一筆5000美元的獎學金，按月支付。

Perhaps the most striking fact about the success programs is that the selection criteria are never disclosed to students. “From a numbers perspective, the students in these programs are all in the bottom quartile,” Laude explained. “But here’s the key — none of them know that they’re in the bottom quartile.” The first rule of the Dashboard, in other words, is that you never talk about the Dashboard. Laude says he assumes that most U.L.N. students understand on some level that they were chosen in part because of their financial need, but he says it is important for the university to play down that fact when dealing directly with students. It is an extension of the basic psychological strategy that he has used ever since that first TIP program: Select the students who are least likely to do well, but in all your communications with them, convey the idea that you have selected them for this special program not because you fear they will fail, but because you are confident they can succeed.

這些“學生成功方案” 最引人注目的事實或許是，選擇標準永遠不會透露給學生。“從數(shù)字視角看，這些方案中的學生全都處于最低的四分之一，”勞德解釋說。“但關鍵在于，他們都不知道自己處于最低的四分之一。” 換句話說，“儀表板”的首要規(guī)則是，你永遠不談論“儀表板”。勞德表示，他假設大多數(shù)ULN學生在一定程度上知道，自己被選中的部分原因是自己需要經(jīng)濟資助，但他說，校方在跟學生打交道時有必要淡化這一點。這是自推出首個TIP計劃以來，他一直使用的基本心理策略的一種延伸：選擇最不可能表現(xiàn)優(yōu)秀的學生，但在與他們的所有溝通中，務必要傳達這樣一種理念，即你挑選他們參加這個特殊計劃，并不是因為你擔心他們將失敗，而是因為你深信他們能夠成功。

Which, from Laude’s perspective, has the virtue of being true. I sat with him in his office one morning in late January, not long after students had arrived back on campus for the spring semester. The university was closed for the day because of a freak ice storm, and he and I were more or less alone in the administration building, a huge clock tower in the center of campus. We were talking about his experience in Sewanee, specifically a low moment almost exactly 38 years earlier when he arrived back on campus for spring semester of his freshman year, plagued with doubt, longing to give up and go home. “Everybody has moments like that,” Laude said. “There are probably 50 or 60 kids in the U.L.N. who are on academic probation right now. They’re coming back, and we’ve got all these great support networks set up for them. But still, there’s got to be a part of them that is afraid, a part of them that wonders if they can make it. My bet is that the vast majority of them will make it. And they will, because nobody will give them the chance to simply give up.”

在勞德看來，這種信念的優(yōu)點在于它是真話。1月下旬的一天上午，我坐在勞德的辦公室里，學生們在不久前重返校園，開始春季學期。由于一場詭異的冰暴來襲，那天學校停課，位于校園中心、作為行政大樓的巨大鐘樓空蕩蕩的，幾乎只剩下我們兩個人。我跟勞德談起他在南方大學的求學經(jīng)歷，特別是差不多剛好38 年前那個人生低谷，當時，重返校園開始大一學年春季學期的他，飽受自我懷疑的折磨，內(nèi)心很想放棄學業(yè)，一走了之。“每個人都會經(jīng)歷那樣的低谷，”勞德說。 “大約50至60名ULN學生目前處于留校察看期。他們返回了校園，而我們?yōu)樗麄儨蕚淞怂羞@些強大的支持網(wǎng)絡。但話說回來，他們?nèi)匀粫械胶ε?，懷疑自己能否完成學業(yè)。我敢打賭，他們當中的絕大多數(shù)人最終將品嘗到成功的滋味。他們會的，因為沒有人會給他們輕易放棄的機會。”

Though Laude is a chemist by training, he spends much of his time thinking like a psychologist, pondering what kind of messages or environmental cues might affect the decisions that the students in his programs make. He’s the first to admit that he is an amateur psychologist at best. But he has found an ally and a kindred spirit in a psychological researcher at U.T. named David Yeager, a 32-year-old assistant professor who is emerging as one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of education. In his research, Yeager is trying to answer the question that Laude wrestles with every day: How, precisely, do you motivate students to take the steps they need to take in order to succeed?

雖然勞德是一位科班出身的化學家，但在很多時候，他的思維方式更像是一位心理學家，沉思什么樣的信息或環(huán)境因素可能影響他在幫助的那些學生們的決策。他坦然承認自己最多是個業(yè)余心理學家。但他在德州大學找到了一位志趣相投的盟友：32歲的心理學研究者戴維·耶格爾(David Yeager)，這位年輕的助理教授正在成為教育心理學領域的世界級專家之一。他的研究試圖回答勞德每天都在捉摸的問題：你究竟該怎樣激勵學生邁出成功所需的步子?

Before he arrived at U.T. in the winter of 2012, Yeager worked as a graduate student in the psychology department at Stanford, during an era when that department had become a hotbed of new thinking on the psychology of education. Leading researchers like Carol Dweck, Claude Steele and Hazel Markus were using experimental methods to delve into the experience of students from early childhood all the way through college. To the extent that the Stanford researchers shared a unifying vision, it was the belief that students were often blocked from living up to their potential by the presence of certain fears and anxieties and doubts about their ability. These feelings were especially virulent at moments of educational transition — like the freshman year of high school or the freshman year of college. And they seemed to be particularly debilitating among members of groups that felt themselves to be under some special threat or scrutiny: women in engineering programs, first-generation college students, African-Americans in the Ivy League.

2012年冬天來德州大學之前，耶格爾在斯坦福大學(Stanford University)以研究生的身份從事心理學研究。在那段時期，斯坦福心理學系異軍突起，成為教育心理學新思維的溫床?？_爾·德偉克(Carol Dweck)、克勞德·斯蒂爾(Claude Steele)和黑茲爾·馬庫斯(Hazel Markus)等頂級心理學家采用實驗性方法，來探究學生從幼兒時期一直到大學時代的經(jīng)歷。在某種程度上，這些斯坦福大學研究人員共享著一個理念：某些恐懼和焦慮情緒，以及對自身能力的懷疑，往往阻止學生實現(xiàn)自己的潛能。在升學過渡階段，比如高一或大一學年，這些情緒尤為致命。而在那些感覺自己受到某種特殊威脅或?qū)徱暤膶W生群體(工程專業(yè)女生、第一代大學生，或常春藤盟校的非洲裔美國學生)中，此類情緒似乎特別有破壞力。

The negative thoughts took different forms in each individual, of course, but they mostly gathered around two ideas. One set of thoughts was about belonging. Students in transition often experienced profound doubts about whether they really belonged — or could ever belong — in their new institution. The other was connected to ability. Many students believed in what Carol Dweck had named an entity theory of intelligence — that intelligence was a fixed quality that was impossible to improve through practice or study. And so when they experienced cues that might suggest that they weren’t smart or academically able — a bad grade on a test, for instance — they would often interpret those as a sign that they could never succeed. Doubts about belonging and doubts about ability often fed on each other, and together they created a sense of helplessness. That helplessness dissuaded students from taking any steps to change things. Why study if I can’t get smarter? Why go out and meet new friends if no one will want to talk to me anyway? Before long, the nagging doubts became self-fulfilling prophecies.

當然，這些消極想法在每個人身上的表現(xiàn)形式有所不同，不過它們大多圍繞著兩個想法。一組想法跟“歸屬感”有關。升學過渡期的學生經(jīng)常會深切地懷疑，自己是否真的屬于(或者終有一天會屬于)這個陌生的新學府。另一組想法跟“能力”有關。許多學生深信卡羅爾·德偉克所稱的“智力實體論”，即智力是一種固定質(zhì)素，不可能通過練習或?qū)W習予以改善。所以，當這些學生遭遇一些可能顯示他們不夠聰明，或者不具備學術能力的蛛絲馬跡(比如某次測驗成績不理想)時，他們往往將其解讀為一個跡象，說明他們永遠也無法成功。對歸屬感和自身能力的疑慮經(jīng)常相互強化，最終形成一種深切的無助感。這種無助感導致學生不愿意采取任何改變現(xiàn)狀的行動。要是我不能變得更聰明，為什么還要學習?要是沒有人愿意跟我聊天，為什么還要出門，試圖結(jié)識新朋友?過不了多久，這些令人泄氣的疑慮就會變成自我實現(xiàn)的預言。

When Yeager arrived at Stanford in 2006, many of the researchers there had begun to move beyond trying to understand this phenomenon to trying to counteract it. In a series of experiments, they found that certain targeted messages, delivered to students in the right way at the right time, seemed to overcome the doubts about belonging and ability that were undermining the students’ academic potential.

當耶格爾在2006年來到斯坦福大學的時候，該校的許多研究人員已經(jīng)開始試圖反制這種現(xiàn)象，而不僅僅是理解它。他們在一系列的實驗中發(fā)現(xiàn)，某些針對性的信息，如果能夠在恰當?shù)臅r間以恰當?shù)姆绞絺鬟f給學生，似乎能夠克服他們對歸屬感和自身能力的疑慮，而此類疑慮正在破壞他們的學術潛能。

Yeager began working with a professor of social psychology named Greg Walton, who had identified principles that seemed to govern which messages, and which methods of delivering those messages, were most persuasive to students. For instance, messages worked better if they appealed to social norms; when college students are informed that most students don’t take part in binge drinking, they’re less likely to binge-drink themselves. Messages were also more effective if they were delivered in a way that allowed the recipients a sense of autonomy. If you march all the high-school juniors into the auditorium and force them to watch a play about tolerance and inclusion, they’re less likely to take the message to heart than if they feel as if they are independently seeking it out. And positive messages are more effectively absorbed when they are experienced through what Walton called “self-persuasion”: if students watch a video or read an essay with a particular message and then write their own essay or make their own video to persuade future students, they internalize the message more deeply.

耶格爾開始與社會心理學教授格雷格·沃爾頓(Greg Walton)合作。沃爾頓此前總結(jié)出的一些原則似乎說明了哪些信息，以及傳遞這些信息的方法，對學生最有說服力。比如，如果這些信息訴諸于社會規(guī)范，其效果往往更好;當大學生們被告知，大多數(shù)學生并不參與狂飲時，他們自己就不太可能狂喝濫飲。如果這些信息的傳遞方式讓接收者有一種自主感，效果也會更好。如果你發(fā)號施令地讓所有高二學生列隊前往學校禮堂，要他們觀看一部以寬容和包容為主題的戲劇，相比他們覺得自己在獨立地探尋這些信息，他們接受這些信息的可能性更小一些。此外，當學生經(jīng)歷沃爾頓所稱的“自我說服”過程時，正面信息可以被更有效地吸收。比如，如果學生觀看一段視頻或者閱讀一篇帶有特定信息的文章，然后自己寫一篇文章或者制作一段視頻來勸說未來的學生，他們就能夠把相關信息更加深入地內(nèi)在化。

In one experiment after another, Yeager and Walton’s methods produced remarkable results. At an elite Northeastern college, Walton, along with another Stanford researcher named Geoffrey Cohen, conducted an experiment in which first-year students read brief essays by upperclassmen recalling their own experiences as freshmen. The upperclassmen conveyed in their own words a simple message about belonging: “When I got here, I thought I was the only one who felt left out. But then I found out that everyone feels that way at first, and everyone gets over it. I got over it, too.” After reading the essays, the students in the experiment then wrote their own essays and made videos for future students, echoing the same message. The whole intervention took no more than an hour. It had no apparent effect on the white students who took part in the experiment. But it had a transformative effect on the college careers of the African-American students in the study: Compared with a control group, the experiment tripled the percentage of black students who earned G.P.A.s in the top quarter of their class, and it cut in half the black-white achievement gap in G.P.A. It even had an impact on the students’ health — the black students who received the belonging message had significantly fewer doctor visits three years after the intervention.

在一次又一次實驗中，耶格爾和沃爾頓的方法收到了顯著效果。在美國東北部一所名牌院校，沃爾頓和另一位名叫杰弗里·科恩(Geoffrey Cohen)的斯坦福大學研究人員進行了一項實驗。這項實驗要求大一新生閱讀高年級學生回顧自身大一經(jīng)歷的短文。這些學長用自己的語言傳遞了一個關于歸屬感的簡單信息：“剛來到這里的時候，我以為我是唯一一個被冷落的新生。但我隨后發(fā)現(xiàn)，每一位初來乍到的新生都有這種感覺，而每個人都克服了這道難關。我也挺過來了。”讀完后，參與實驗的學生隨即面向未來的學生撰寫短文，制作視頻，呼應了同樣的信息。整個干預過程花費了不到一個小時。它沒有明顯影響參加實驗的白人學生，但對非洲裔學生的大學生涯產(chǎn)生了變革性影響：與一個對照組相比，這項實驗助推平均績點位列所在班級前四分之一的黑人學生比例增加了兩倍，并且使黑人和白人學生的平均績點差距收窄了一半。它甚至對學生的健康產(chǎn)生了影響——實施這項干預三年后，接到歸屬感信息的黑人學生求醫(yī)的次數(shù)顯著較少。

Next, Yeager did an experiment with 600 students just entering ninth grade at three high schools in Northern California. The intervention was 25 minutes long; students sat at a terminal in the school computer lab and read scientific articles and testimonials from older students with another simple message: People change. If someone is being mean to you or excluding you, the essays explained, it was most likely a temporary thing; it wasn’t because of any permanent trait in him or you. Yeager chose ninth grade because it is well known as a particularly bad time for the onset of depression — generally, depression rates double over the transition to high school. Indeed, among the control group in Yeager’s experiment, symptoms of depression rose by 39 percent during that school year. Among the group who had received the message that people change, though, there was no significant increase in depressive symptoms. The intervention didn’t cure anyone’s depression, in other words, but it did stop the appearance of depressive symptoms during a traditionally depressive period. And it did so in just 25 minutes of treatment.

接下來，耶格爾針對北加州三所高中600名剛剛進入九年級的學生做了一項實驗。這次干預的時間長度為25分鐘;這些學生坐在學校計算機實驗室的電腦終端前，閱讀科學文章和高年級學生撰寫的個人證詞，其內(nèi)容包含另一個簡單的信息：人是會變的。這些文章解釋說，如果有人對你刻薄，或者排擠你，那很有可能只是暫時的，而不是因為他或者你身上具有某種永久性的特質(zhì)。耶格爾選擇九年級學生的原因在于一個已知的事實：這是一個抑郁癥高發(fā)的時間點——大致而言，在進入高中的過渡期，抑郁癥的發(fā)病率會翻一番。的確，在對照組的學生中，抑郁癥癥狀在該學年增長了39%。然而，在這個收到“人是會變的”這一信息的學生群體中，抑郁癥癥狀并沒有顯著增加。換句話說，這項干預并沒有治愈任何人的抑郁癥，但在一個傳統(tǒng)的抑郁癥高發(fā)期，它確實遏止了抑郁癥癥狀的出現(xiàn)。而收到這個效果只花費了短短25分鐘。

After the depression study, Yeager, Walton and two other researchers did an experiment with community-college students who were enrolled in remedial or “developmental” math classes. Education advocates have identified remedial math in community college as a particularly devastating obstacle to the college hopes of many students, especially low-income students, who disproportionately attend community college. The statistics are daunting: About two-thirds of all community-college students are placed into one or more remedial math classes, and unless they pass those classes, they can’t graduate. More than two-thirds of them don’t pass; instead, they often drop out of college altogether.

抑郁癥研究結(jié)束后，耶格爾、沃爾頓和其他兩名研究人員針對社區(qū)學院中被納入補習或“發(fā)展”數(shù)學課的學生進行了一項實驗。教育倡導者早已指出，社區(qū)學院的數(shù)學補習計劃是許多學生實現(xiàn)大學夢的一個破壞力特別大的障礙，特別是對作為社區(qū)學院主體的低收入家庭學生而言。相關統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)看上去非?？膳拢捍蠹s三分之二的社區(qū)學院學生被要求參加一個或多個數(shù)學補習班，他們必須通過這些課程，否則就不能畢業(yè)。其中超過三分之二的學生沒有通過;相反，他們往往徹底放棄高校學業(yè)。

Clearly, part of the developmental-math crisis has to do with the fact that many students aren’t receiving a good-enough math education in middle or high school and are graduating from high school underprepared for college math. But Yeager and Walton and a growing number of other researchers believe that another significant part of the problem is psychological. They echo David Laude’s intuition from the early days of TIP: When you send college students the message that they’re not smart enough to be in college — and it’s hard not to get that message when you’re placed into a remedial math class as soon as you arrive on campus — those students internalize that idea about themselves.

發(fā)展數(shù)學課危機在某種程度上顯然跟一個事實有關：許多學生在初中或高中階段沒有得到足夠好的數(shù)學教育，高中畢業(yè)時的數(shù)學水平不足以應對大學數(shù)學課程。但耶格爾和沃爾頓，以及越來越多的其他研究人員認為，這個問題的另一大原因是心理層面的。他們呼應了戴維·勞德當初推出TIP計劃時的直覺：如果你給大學生傳遞這樣一個信息，即他們的聰明程度不足以進入大學——如果一位學生剛踏入校門就被分配到一個數(shù)學補習班，他或她很難不得到這個信息——這些學生就會把這種評價內(nèi)在化。

In the experiment, 288 community-college students enrolled in developmental math were randomly assigned, at the beginning of the semester, to read one of two articles. The control group read a generic article about the brain. The treatment group read an article that laid out the scientific evidence against the entity theory of intelligence. “When people learn and practice new ways of doing algebra or statistics,” the article explained, “it can grow their brains — even if they haven’t done well in math in the past.” After reading the article, the students wrote a mentoring letter to future students explaining its key points. The whole exercise took 30 minutes, and there was no follow-up of any kind. But at the end of the semester, 20 percent of the students in the control group had dropped out of developmental math, compared with just 9 percent of the treatment group. In other words, a half-hour online intervention, done at almost no cost, had apparently cut the community-college math dropout rate by more than half.

在這項試驗中，288名被要求參加發(fā)展數(shù)學課的社區(qū)學院學生，在開學伊始被隨機分成兩組，分別閱讀兩篇不同的文章。對照組閱讀一篇談論大腦的一般性文章。實驗組閱讀一篇列舉科學證據(jù)駁斥“智力實體論”的文章。“當人們學習和練習做代數(shù)或統(tǒng)計題的新方法時，”這篇文章解釋說，“他們的大腦會變得更發(fā)達 ——即使他們過去沒有學好數(shù)學這門課。”讀完這篇文章后，學生們給未來學生寫了一封解釋文中要點的指導性信件。整個過程耗時30分鐘，而且沒有任何跟進措施。但在學期結(jié)束時，20%的對照組學生已經(jīng)退出發(fā)展數(shù)學課，而僅有9%的實驗組學生做出了這種選擇。換句話說，一項持續(xù)了僅僅半小時，幾乎沒有任何成本的在線干預，顯然把社區(qū)學院的數(shù)學輟學率削減了一半多。

Soon after Yeager arrived at the University of Texas, in the winter of 2012, he got an email from a vice provost at the university named Gretchen Ritter, who had heard about his work and wanted to learn more. At Ritter’s invitation, Yeager gave a series of presentations to various groups of administrators at the university; each time, he mentioned that he and Walton were beginning to test whether interventions that addressed students’ anxieties about ability and belonging could improve the transition to college, especially for first-generation students. Ritter asked Yeager if the approach might work in Austin. Could he create an intervention not for just a few hundred students, but for every incoming U.T. freshman? In theory, yes, Yeager told her. But at that scale, it would need to be done online. And if he did it, he said, he would want to do it as a randomized controlled experiment, so he and Walton could collect valuable new data on what worked. In April 2012, Ritter asked Yeager to test his intervention on the more than 8,000 teenagers who made up the newly admitted U.T. class of 2016. It would be one of the largest randomized experiments ever undertaken by social or developmental psychologists. And it would need to be ready to go in three weeks.

2012年冬天，剛剛抵達德州大學沒多久的耶格爾，就收到了該校副教務長格雷琴·里特(Gretchen Ritter)發(fā)來的一封電子郵件。里特此前聽說過他的研究，希望了解更多情況。應里特的邀請，耶格爾給該校各院系的管理者做了一系列演講。每次他都會提到，他和沃爾頓已開始測試，旨在解決學生對自身能力和歸屬感疑慮的干預手段，能否改善大學生(特別是第一代大學生)剛剛踏入校門后的升學過渡期?里特問他，這種方式是否有可能在奧斯汀奏效?他能否創(chuàng)建一種不僅針對幾百名學生，而是針對每一位德州大學新生的干預手段?理論上可行，耶格爾告訴她。但鑒于規(guī)模如此之大，這項實驗需要在網(wǎng)上進行。他說，如果要做的話，他想把它做成一項隨機對照試驗，這樣他和沃爾頓就能收集關于哪些方法管用的寶貴數(shù)據(jù)。2012年 4月，里特請耶格爾測試他的干預手段，對象是剛剛被錄取為德州大學2016屆學生的逾8000名青少年。這將是有史以來社會或發(fā)展心理學家開展的最大規(guī)模隨機實驗之一。而這項實驗需要在三個星期后準備就緒。

Yeager was already feeling overwhelmed. He and his wife had just moved to Austin. Three weeks earlier, they had their second child. He was swamped with lingering commitments from Stanford and scrambling to stay on top of the classes he was teaching for the first time. But he was painfully aware of the statistics on the graduation gaps at U.T., and he had enough faith in the interventions that he and Walton were developing to think that a well-orchestrated large-scale version could make a difference. “I went home to Margot, my wife,” he told me, “and I said: ‘O.K., I know I’m already overworked. I know I’m already never at home. But bear with me for three more weeks. Because this has the potential to be one of the most important things I ever do.’ ”

耶格爾當時已經(jīng)不堪重負。他和妻子剛搬到奧斯汀。他們的第二個孩子剛剛在三個星期前出生。他的工作可謂千頭萬緒，一方面，對斯坦福大學的承諾尚未了結(jié)，另一方面，他正在竭力教好他首次執(zhí)教的課程。但他痛苦地意識到德州大學的畢業(yè)率差距，并對自己和沃爾頓正在開發(fā)的干預手段充滿信心，認為一個精心策劃的大型版本有望扭轉(zhuǎn)局面。他告訴我，“回到家中，我對太太瑪戈說，‘好吧，我知道我的工作已經(jīng)超負荷了。我也知道我已經(jīng)很少在家。但請再給我三個星期。因為這或許將成為我一輩子最重要的事情之一。’”

Yeager immediately began holding focus groups and one-on-one discussions with current U.T. students, trying to get a clearer understanding of which messages would work best at U.T. It’s an important point to remember about these interventions, and one Yeager often emphasizes: Even though the basic messages about belonging and ability recur from one intervention to the next, he and Walton believe that the language of the message needs to be targeted to the particular audience for each intervention. The anxieties that a high-achieving African-American freshman at an Ivy League college might experience are distinct from the anxieties experienced by a community-college student who was just placed into remedial math.

耶格爾立即開始主辦焦點小組，并與在校的德州大學學生進行一對一討論，試圖更清晰地了解在德州大學哪些信息將獲得最佳效果。耶格爾經(jīng)常強調(diào)指出，實施這些干預手段時，務必要記得：即使與歸屬感和自身能力相關的基本信息在一個接一個干預中反復出現(xiàn)，但他和沃爾頓認為，這些信息的措辭需要針對每項干預的特定受眾。一位成績優(yōu)異的非洲裔新生在一所常青藤盟?？赡芨惺艿降慕箲]，迥異于一位剛剛被安排參加數(shù)學補習班的社區(qū)學院學生感受到的焦慮。

Yeager and Ritter decided that the best way to deliver the chosen messages to the incoming students was to make them a part of the online pre-orientation that every freshman was required to complete before arriving on campus. That May, rising freshmen began receiving the usual welcome-to-U.T. emails from the registrar’s office, inviting them to log on to U.T.’s website and complete a series of forms and tasks. Wedged in between the information about the meningococcal vaccine requirements and the video about the U.T. honor code was a link to Yeager’s interactive presentation about the “U.T. Mindset.”

耶格爾和里特決定，向新生傳遞選定信息的最佳方式，是將它們夾在每位新生在踏入校門前必須在網(wǎng)上完成的入學前準備(pre- orientation)的內(nèi)容中。當年5月份，即將入學的新生們陸續(xù)收到德州大學招生辦公室發(fā)來的歡迎入學郵件，邀請他們登錄德州大學網(wǎng)站，完成一系列表格和任務。有關接種腦膜炎疫苗的要求和介紹德州大學榮譽準則的視頻之間夾著一個鏈接，點擊該鏈接就可進入耶格爾設計的互動演示內(nèi)容，其主題是“德州大學觀念模式”。

Students were randomly sorted into four categories. A “belonging” treatment group read messages from current students explaining that they felt alone and excluded when they arrived on campus, but then realized that everyone felt that way and eventually began to feel at home. A “mind-set” treatment group read an article about the malleability of the brain and how practice makes it grow new connections, and then read messages from current students stating that when they arrived at U.T., they worried about not being smart enough, but then learned that when they studied they grew smarter. A combination treatment group received a hybrid of the belonging and mind-set presentations. And finally, a control group read fairly banal reflections from current students stating that they were surprised by Austin’s culture and weather when they first arrived, but eventually they got used to them. Students in each group were asked, after clicking through a series of a dozen or so web pages, to write their own reflections on what they’d read in order to help future students. The whole intervention took between 25 and 45 minutes for students to complete, and more than 90 percent of the incoming class completed it.

學生們被隨機分成四類。“歸屬感”實驗組閱讀在校生傳遞的信息，這些在校生解釋說，剛到達校園時，他們很孤單，覺得自己被排斥在外，但隨后意識到每個人都是這種感覺，最終開始覺得像在家一樣自在。“觀念模式”實驗組閱讀一篇講述大腦可塑性，以及練習怎樣促使大腦建立新連接的文章，然后閱讀在校生傳遞的信息，稱剛來到德州大學時，他們擔心自己不夠聰明，但隨后意識到，隨著他們投入學習，他們會變得更聰明。綜合實驗組則收到一個既包括歸屬感信息、又包括觀念模式信息的陳述。最后，對照組學生閱讀一組由在校生撰寫的泛泛而談的感言，稱剛來到這里時，奧斯丁校園的文化和天氣讓他們感到驚訝，但最終還是適應了這里的氛圍。點擊讀完十幾個網(wǎng)頁后，每組學生都被要求寫一篇讀后感，以幫助未來的學生。整個過程需要學生花費大約25到45分鐘，超過90%的新生完成了這項實驗。

Going in, Yeager thought of the 2012 experiment as a pilot — simply a way to test out the mechanics of a large-scale intervention. He didn’t have much confidence that it would produce significant results, so he was surprised when, at the end of the fall semester, he looked at the data regarding which students had successfully completed at least 12 credits. First-semester credit-completion has always been an early indicator of the gaps that appear later for U.T. students. Every year, only 81 or 82 percent of “disadvantaged” freshmen — meaning, in this study, those who are black, Latino or first-generation — complete those 12 credits by Christmas, compared with about 90 percent of more advantaged students.

耶格爾最初是把2012年這場實驗作為一個試點來做的，只不過是想測試大規(guī)模干預活動的運作機制。至于這場實驗能否產(chǎn)生顯著的成果，他并沒有多大信心。所以，在秋季學期結(jié)束時，當耶格爾看到哪些學生已經(jīng)成功完成至少12個學分的相關數(shù)據(jù)時，他感到驚訝。第一學期的學分完成情況，向來是預測德州大學學生日后學業(yè)差距的早期指標。每年，在“弱勢”新生(在這項研究中，他們大多是黑人，非洲裔或第一代大學生)中，只有81%或82%的人能夠在圣誕節(jié)前修完 12個學分，而條件較好的學生完成這些學分的比例高達90%左右。

In January 2013, when Yeager analyzed the first-semester data, he saw the advantaged students’ results were exactly the same as they were every year. No matter which message they saw in the pre-orientation presentation, 90 percent of that group was on track. Similarly, the disadvantaged students in the control group, who saw the bland message about adjusting to Austin’s culture and weather, did the same as disadvantaged students usually did: 82 percent were on track. But the disadvantaged students who had experienced the belonging and mind-set messages did significantly better: 86 percent of them had completed 12 credits or more by Christmas. They had cut the gap between themselves and the advantaged students in half.

2013年1月，當耶格爾分析第一個學期數(shù)據(jù)的時候，他發(fā)現(xiàn)條件較好學生的成績跟往年一模一樣。無論他們在入學前互動演示內(nèi)容中看到哪一類信息，90%的學生保持在學業(yè)正軌上。同樣，對照組中的弱勢學生(也就是那些看到了如何適應奧斯丁校園文化和天氣等泛泛而談信息的學生)的表現(xiàn)也一如往常：82%的學生保持在學業(yè)正軌上。但那些接收到歸屬感和觀念模式信息的弱勢學生的表現(xiàn)顯著改善：他們當中86%的人在圣誕節(jié)前完成了12個或更多的學分。這意味著，他們將自己與條件較好學生的差距縮小了一半。

A rise of four percentage points might not seem like much of a revolution. And Yeager and Walton are certainly not declaring victory yet. But if the effect of the intervention persists over the next three years (as it did in the elite-college study), it could mean hundreds of first-generation students graduating from U.T. in 2016 who otherwise wouldn’t have graduated on time, if ever. It would go a long way toward helping David Laude meet his goals. And all from a one-time intervention that took 45 minutes to complete. The U.T. administration was encouraged; beginning this month, the “U.T. Mindset” intervention will be part of the pre-orientation for all 7,200 members of the incoming class of 2018.

上升4個百分點貌似算不上一場革命。耶格爾和沃爾頓肯定不會就此宣告勝利。但如果這項干預的效果在未來三年期間持續(xù)存在(就像在那所東北部名校開展的研究那樣)，它可能意味著在2016年，有數(shù)百名本來無法按時畢業(yè)，甚至永遠不會畢業(yè)的第一代大學生獲得德州大學學位。這將大大有助于戴維·勞德實現(xiàn)他的目標。而這一切都來自僅需45分鐘完成的一次性干預。德州大學管理層深受鼓舞;從本月開始，“德州大學觀念模式”干預將成為2018屆全部7200名新生入學前準備的一部分。

When Yeager and Walton present their work to fellow researchers, the first reaction they often hear is that their results can’t possibly be true. Early on, they each had a scientific paper or grants rejected not because there were flaws in their data or their methodology, but simply because people didn’t believe that such powerful effects could come from such minimal interventions. Yeager admits that their data can seem unbelievable — they contradict many of our essential assumptions about how the human mind works. But he can articulate an entirely plausible explanation for what’s happening when students hear or read these messages, whether they’re at U.T. or in community college or in ninth grade.

當耶格爾和沃爾頓向其他研究人員展示他們的研究成果時，他們經(jīng)常聽到的第一反應是，這些成果不可能是真的。他們兩人早前都有過科學論文投稿或經(jīng)費申請被拒的經(jīng)歷，這倒不是因為他們的數(shù)據(jù)或研究方法存在什么缺陷，而僅僅是因為人們不相信，如此強大的效果竟然出自如此微小的干預。耶格爾承認，他們的數(shù)據(jù)可能看上去令人難以置信——它們違背了很多有關人腦思維方式的基本假設。但他可以對學生們聽到或讀到這些信息之后發(fā)生的事情做出一個完全可信的解釋，無論他們是德州大學或某個社區(qū)學院的大學生，還是九年級學生。

Our first instinct, when we read about these experiments, is that what the interventions must be doing is changing students’ minds — replacing one deeply held belief with another. And it is hard to imagine that reading words on a computer screen for 25 minutes could possibly do that. People just aren’t that easy to persuade. But Yeager believes that the interventions are not in fact changing students’ minds — they are simply keeping them from overinterpreting discouraging events that might happen in the future. “We don’t prevent you from experiencing those bad things,” Yeager explains. “Instead, we try to change the meaning of them, so that they don’t mean to you that things are never going to get better.”

在我們讀到這些實驗的結(jié)果時，我們的第一個本能反應是，這些干預肯定改變了學生的觀念——用另一種信念代替了一種根深蒂固的信念。很難想象，在電腦屏幕上閱讀25分鐘的文字有可能做到這一點。人是沒有那么容易被說服的。但耶格爾認為，這些干預其實沒有改變學生的觀念，只是讓他們不去過度解讀未來可能發(fā)生的令人沮喪的事件。“我們無法阻止你遭遇那些不好的事情，”耶格爾解釋說。“相反，我們試圖改變它們的意義，使它們不至于對你意味著情況永遠不會好轉(zhuǎn)。”

Every college freshman — rich or poor, white or minority, first-generation or legacy — experiences academic setbacks and awkward moments when they feel they don’t belong. But white students and wealthy students and students with college-graduate parents tend not to take those moments too seriously or too personally. Sure, they still feel bad when they fail a test or get in a fight with a roommate or are turned down for a date. But in general, they don’t interpret those setbacks as a sign that they don’t belong in college or that they’re not going to succeed there.

每個大一新生——不論貧富，白人或少數(shù)族裔，是不是第一代大學生——都會經(jīng)歷學業(yè)挫折，經(jīng)歷讓他們覺得自己不屬于校園環(huán)境的尷尬時刻。但白人學生、富裕學生以及父母接受過高等教育的學生，往往不太把這些時刻當回事，或者說不太往心里去。沒錯，當他們測驗不及格，跟室友吵架，或者約會被拒時，他們的心情同樣很糟糕。但他們通常不會認為，這些挫折說明自己不屬于高等學府，或者自己無法完成學業(yè)。

It is only students facing the particular fears and anxieties and experiences of exclusion that come with being a minority — whether by race or by class — who are susceptible to this problem. Those students often misinterpret temporary setbacks as a permanent indication that they can’t succeed or don’t belong at U.T. For those students, the intervention can work as a kind of inoculation. And when, six months or two years later, the germs of self-doubt try to infect them, the lingering effect of the intervention allows them to shrug off those doubts exactly the way the advantaged students do.

只有那些因自己的少數(shù)群體身份(無論是種族方面，還是階層方面)而面臨特殊的恐懼和焦慮，有過受排斥經(jīng)歷的學生，才容易受這類問題影響。這些學生往往將暫時的挫折誤解為一種永久性的指標，說明他們不可能在德州大學獲得成功，或者根本就不屬于這里。對于這些學生來說，干預的作用就像是一劑預防針。半年或兩年后，當自我懷疑的病菌試圖感染他們的時候，干預的殘留效果讓他們能夠擺脫那些疑慮，就像條件較好的學生所做的那樣。

When I spoke with Vanessa Brewer in January, she was deep in the grip of those doubts. She had made it through the fall with a perfectly decent 3.0 G.P.A., and she even pulled out a B-plus in statistics, but she looked back on it as a very difficult stretch. “I felt like no one really believed in me,” she said. Her mother was the only person she really confided in, but even those conversations sometimes made her feel more aware of the lack of a support system around her. “She told me I sounded different,” Vanessa said. “She was like: ‘Are you O.K.? Are you taking care of yourself?’ I’m normally a pretty happy person, but I guess when I called her, it was more monotone, uninterested.”

今年1月，當我跟凡妮莎·布魯爾交談的時候，她正深受這些疑慮折磨。在剛剛過去的秋季學期，她的平均績點是3.0，這是一個相當不錯的成績。她甚至在統(tǒng)計課考試中得了一個B+，但她覺得那是一段非常難熬的時期。“我覺得沒有人真的對我抱有信心，”她說。母親是她唯一的傾訴對象，但就連這些談話有時也讓凡妮莎更加意識到，自己的周圍缺少一個支持系統(tǒng)。“她告訴我，我聽起來有點不一樣，” 凡妮莎說，“她總是問我：‘你還好吧?能照顧好自己嗎?’我通常是個很快樂的人，但我猜想，給媽媽打電話時，我的聲音很單調(diào)，聽上去有點冷淡。”

When Vanessa thought about the semester ahead of her, she felt stressed out, and she told me that her anxiety about whether she belonged at U.T. was with her every time she stepped into a classroom. “Everybody else seems like they have it in the bag,” she said. “They look intimidating, even when they’re just sitting in class — even the way they’re taking notes. They seem so confident. I sometimes feel like I am the only one who is lost, you know?”

展望即將開始的新學期，凡妮莎覺得壓力太大了。她告訴我，每次走進教室時，她都有一種焦慮感：自己是否屬于德州大學?“別人都是一副躊躇滿志的樣子，”她說。“他們看上去令人生畏，即便他們只是坐在教室里，即便只是他們記筆記的樣子。他們看上去是那么信心滿滿。你知道嗎?我有時覺得自己是唯一不知所措的人。”

But as the spring semester progressed, things started to look up for Vanessa. She was taking the dreaded Chemistry 301, and while she found it a real challenge, she was also determined not to fall behind. She was enrolled in U.L.N. and in Discovery Scholars, another of the programs David Laude oversaw, and her advisers arranged for her to get free help at the campus tutoring center. She spent six or more hours there each week, going over chemistry problems, and by March she was getting A’s and B’s on every test.

但在春季學期開始后，凡妮莎的境遇逐漸改觀。她開始攻讀可怕的《化學301》課，盡管她發(fā)現(xiàn)這門課是一個真正的挑戰(zhàn)，但她也抱定了跟上學業(yè)的決心。她參加了ULN網(wǎng)絡，以及戴維·勞德負責的另一個計劃——“發(fā)現(xiàn)學者”(Discovery Scholars)。凡妮莎的顧問安排她在校園輔導中心獲得免費幫助。她每周花費6小時或更多時間在那里復習化學功課，到3月份，她每次測驗都獲得了A或 B。

Gradually, Vanessa started to feel a greater sense of belonging. She told me about a day in February when she was hanging out in the Discovery Scholars office and suddenly had an impulse to “do a little networking.” She went up to the young woman working at the front desk, an African-American undergrad like Vanessa, and asked her on a whim if she knew any students in the nursing program. As it happened, the woman’s two best friends were in nursing, and they had just helped start an African-American nursing association at U.T.

漸漸地，凡妮莎開始感受到一種更大的歸屬感。她給我講述了2月份某天的經(jīng)歷。那天，正在“發(fā)現(xiàn)學者”辦公室閑著的凡妮莎突然產(chǎn)生了“交幾個朋友”的沖動。她走到正在前臺工作的年輕女子(像凡妮莎一樣，她也是一位非洲裔本科生)跟前，突發(fā)奇想地問她是否認識哪位攻讀護理課程的同學。很湊巧，這位女同學有兩位最要好的朋友在護理專業(yè)，她們剛剛在德州大學幫助創(chuàng)建了一個非洲裔美國人護理協(xié)會。

Vanessa got their numbers and started texting with them, and they invited her to one of their meetings. They were juniors, a couple of years older than Vanessa, and they took her under their wing. “I like having someone to look up to,” Vanessa told me. “I felt like I was alone, but then I found people who said, you know, ‘I cried just like you.’ And it helped.”

獲得電話號碼后，凡妮莎開始跟她們進行短信交流，隨后應邀參加她們的一個會議。這兩位同學都是大三學生，比她大兩歲，她們很快就接納了凡妮莎。“擁有榜樣的感覺真好，”凡妮莎告訴我，“我過去覺得自己形單影只，但隨后發(fā)現(xiàn)有人說，‘我也像你一樣大哭過。’我就感覺好些了。”

The messages about belonging and ability that Vanessa was hearing from her mentors and tutors weren’t the only things getting her through Chemistry 301, of course. But they were important in lots of subtle but meaningful ways, helping to steer her toward some seemingly small decisions that made a big difference in her prospects at U.T. Like walking into the tutoring center and asking for help. Or working up the nerve to ask a stranger if she knew any friendly nursing students.

當然，凡妮莎從她的同輩導師和指導老師那里聽到的關于歸屬感和能力的信息，并不是幫助她通過《化學301》考試的唯一因素。然而，它們的重要性以許多細微而有意義的方式體現(xiàn)出來，引導凡妮莎做出一些看似微小、但對她在德州大學的發(fā)展前景頗有助益的決定，比如走進輔導中心尋求幫助，鼓起勇氣詢問一位陌生人是否認識護理專業(yè)的好友，等等。

I spoke to dozens of freshmen during the months I spent reporting in Austin, most of them, like Vanessa, enrolled in U.L.N. or another of Laude’s programs. And while each student’s story was different, it was remarkable how often the narratives of their freshman years followed the same arc: arriving on campus feeling confident because of their success in high school, then being laid low by an early failure. One student told me he fell into a depression and couldn’t sleep. Another said she lost weight and broke out in a rash. But then, sometimes after weeks or months of feeling lost and unhappy, most of them found their way back to a deeper kind of confidence. Often the support necessary for that recovery came from a U.L.N. adviser or a TIP mentor; sometimes it came from a family member or a church community or a roommate. But one way or another, almost all of the students I spoke to were able to turn things around, often pulling themselves back from some very low places.

在奧斯丁做報道的幾個月期間，我采訪了幾十位大學新生，像凡妮莎一樣，其中大多數(shù)人被招收到ULN或勞德負責的其他項目。雖然每個學生的故事有所不同，但值得注意的是，他們的新生學年基本上遵循相同的軌跡：剛進入校園時，高中時代的成功讓他們滿懷信心，但很快就被一次失敗擊垮。一位學生告訴我，他陷入了抑郁，嚴重失眠。另一個學生說，她的體重驟減，突發(fā)皮疹。 但隨后，在經(jīng)歷了數(shù)周乃至數(shù)月的迷茫和郁悶之后，大多數(shù)人重拾一種更深層次的自信。通常情況下，這種復蘇所需的支持來自某位ULN顧問或TIP導師;有時候，這種支持來自家人、教會團體或某位室友。但不管怎樣，幾乎所有接受我采訪的學生都能夠扭轉(zhuǎn)局面，往往把自己從人生低谷拉回來。

“What I like about these interventions is that the kids themselves make all the tough choices,” Yeager told me. “They deserve all the credit. We as interveners don’t. And that’s the best way to intervene. Ultimately a person has within themselves some kind of capital, some kind of asset, like knowledge or confidence. And if we can help bring that out, they then carry that asset with them to the next difficulty in life.”

“對于這些干預手段，我尤為欣賞的一點是，所有那些艱難的抉擇都是孩子們自己做出的，”耶格爾告訴我。“所有的功勞應該歸他們所有，而不屬于我們這些干預者。這就是最好的干預方式。說到底，每個人的內(nèi)在都擁有某種資本，某種資產(chǎn)，比如說知識或信心。如果我們能夠幫助他們把這種資產(chǎn)挖掘出來，他們就會憑借這種資產(chǎn)迎接人生的下一個挑戰(zhàn)。”

My conversations with the U.L.N. students left me feeling optimistic about their chances. But they also served as a reminder of how easy it is for things to tip the other way — for those early doubts to metastasize into crippling anxieties. What Laude and Yeager are helping to demonstrate is that with the right support, both academic and psychological, these students can actually graduate at high rates from an elite university like the University of Texas. Which is exactly why the giant educational experiment now taking place there has meaning well beyond the Austin campus.

與ULN學生的交談讓我對他們的成功幾率持樂觀態(tài)度。不過，這些交談也提醒我，事情很容易倒向另一端——那些初期的質(zhì)疑演變成讓人什么事也做不成的焦慮。勞德和耶格爾的工作證明，借助恰當?shù)闹С?既包括學術支持，也包括心理支持)，這些學生完全能夠以非常高的比率從德州大學這類名校順利畢業(yè)。這正是為什么該校正在進行的大型教育實驗的意義遠遠超出奧斯丁校園。