You've probably heard about the Varsity Blues scandal.

你大概也聽過著名的 Varsity Blues 醜聞。

Two famous actresses caught up in what prosecutors are calling the largest college admissions scam ever.

兩位有名的女演員被檢察官抓包，並被稱作史上最大的大學申請的騙局。

They stand accused of paying millions in bribes to get their kids into elite colleges.

他們被指控支付了數百萬賄賂以送他們的孩子進入菁英大學。

Even staging photos for students who never even played the sport.

他們甚至還造假了孩子競賽的照片，而他們根本就不會那項運動。

But that's just one example.

但這只是其中一個例子。

There were also the college counselors who were bullied to the point of quitting, and the wealthy parents who schemed to get their kids financial aid.

也有其他情況，像是大學顧問被霸凌而被迫辭職，或是有錢的父母策略性地為孩子爭取獎助金。

So they're giving up guardianship of their kids in declaring them legally independent.

他們為了讓自己的孩子在法律上獨立，而放棄對孩子的監護權。

Giving them a better shot at qualifying for need-based financial aid.

這正是為了讓他們更有機會取得獎助金。

Why is there so much hysteria around these few institutions, and what can be done about it?

為什麼人們會為了這些少數教育機構而變得歇斯底里？而我們又能怎麼做？

The Ivy League epitomizes elitism.

常春藤大學代表了菁英主義。

Why are we so obsessed with it anyway?

為什麼人們會對它如此著迷呢？

America has a way of idealizing and idolizing these institutions that are kind of hallmarks of success.

美國有一種理想化和偶像化這些大學的方式，讓它們成為一種成功的標誌。

Probably a poor barometer, but a barometer nonetheless is looking at movies throughout history where people are going to Harvard or Princeton or Yale.

這可能是一個差強人意的標誌，但我們還是可以看見歷史上的電影中有許多人都進入了哈佛、普林斯頓、耶魯大學。

Hollywood has long portrayed Ivy League schools in a golden light.

好萊塢一直都把常春藤過度包裝了。

Harvard isn't for everyone.

哈佛不是誰都能唸的。

So has the president.

總統也是這樣。

Then they said, well they went to Ivy League college, so did I go to Ivy League college.

他們說，他們都去了常春藤大學，但我也是，去唸了常春藤。

Most of Congress and all of these kind of very elite spaces, a lot of graduates of Harvard and Yale and Princeton are there.

國會的多數席位以及所有這些菁英聚集的地方，都有哈佛、耶魯和普林斯頓大學畢業生的影子。

No one is certain exactly where the term Ivy League comes from.

沒有人能夠確定常春藤這個名字的由來。

Ivy may refer to the Roman numeral for four when four of the original colleges formed a sports league.

Ivy 可能是源於羅馬數字中的四，當時有四所學院最早組織了體育聯盟。

Today the league consists of eight schools that boast historical significance, with seven of them founded before the American Revolution.

今天的聯盟由八所具有歷史意義的學校組成，其中有七所在美國大革命之前就已經成立。

These schools cultivate selectivity and a reputation of prestige that people want to be a part of.

這些學校助長了強烈的競爭性和以及他們本身的聲望，使得人們都想加入他們。

They have been selected carefully.

「這些人都被小心地篩選過。」

Each year it seems that they break a record for the number of applications that they've gotten, but they've maintained the same amount of seats.

每年他們都在申請人數上突破新紀錄，但能入學的人數卻沒有改變。

As the demand increases the gall with which people will go to some of these underhanded methods to get their children into these colleges has only increased.

隨著需求的增加，人們也變得更大膽，而開始會採用一些不乾淨的方法來使自己的孩子進入這些大學。

Take the curious case of Sidwell Friends—a top school in DC.

以 DC 最好的學校 Sidwell Friends 為例。

School officials repeatedly warned parents to stop all kinds of bad behavior:

學校的職員多次要求父母停止學生的一些行為，如：

verbally assaulting college counselors, recording their conversations, and calling them from blocked numbers, even circulating rumors about students.

以言語攻擊大學顧問、錄音記錄他們的談話、並用未顯示號碼打電話騷擾他們，甚至散佈有關學生的謠言。

Two out of three of the college counselors left their jobs this year.

在三位大學顧問中，今年有兩位辭職離開。

I think the people who are most likely to do this are people who are overly stressed and believe delusionally that their kids simply have to, not want to, but have to go to this college or that university.

我覺得最有可能做出這些事的人，是那些壓力過大，並妄想自己的孩子必須，不只是想要，而是必須進到某間大學就讀。

And if they believe that the regular levers of power and of leverage that they have aren't adequate, then they start to doing all sort of things like undermining other children or bribing proctors.

而如果他們認為自己所掌握的常規權力和手段不足以達到目標，那麼他們就會開始做各種各樣的事情，例如，敗壞其他孩子的名聲或賄賂監考人員。

To add to the stress of fierce competition, higher education has become so unaffordable for millions of Americans, even the wealthy feel the pinch.

在激烈競爭之外，即使是有錢的人，現在高等教育的費用對成千上萬的美國人來說也變得難以負擔，而這也加劇了申請過程的壓力。

But low income people are hit the hardest.

這對低收入的打擊是最大的。

Students from the the top quintile attend college at three times the rate of students from the lowest quintile of earning families.

來自收入前五分之一家庭的學生上大學的比例是來自收入後五分之一家庭的學生的三倍。

It's just a remarkable statistic, and it becomes even more insult to injury when you add on to the fact that students or parents are either cheating their way into an institution or trying to find ways to pay for an institution that were meant for those students who have already had a hard enough time getting there.

這是一個很驚人的數字，這也讓那些通過作弊或賄賂學校以得到入學資格的家長和學生顯得更加不堪，因為這些機會本來是該留給那些原本較弱勢的學生。

Schools have not gotten ahead of this behavior so far.

學校目前還沒有找到應對這些行為的策略。

A place like Harvard with a 37 billion dollar endowment could stand to enroll a few more students to kind of cut back on some of that selectivity.

像哈佛這樣擁有 370 億美元捐款的地方可能會選擇招收更多的學生，以減少這種過度競爭。

As long as highly selective institutions remain as selective as they are, people will try to scam to get into them.

但只要高度競爭的機構保持不變的低錄取率，人們就會想要去走後門。

There could also be less focus on getting in and more on actually graduating.

這也會造成人們把焦點放在錄取而不是畢業。

One of the issues with the hysteria around the college admissions process is that it treats the entry into college as success rather than the back end of college as success.

與大學錄取過程有關的可怕問題之一是，它將進入大學視為成功，而不是將大學畢業視為成功。

So if we're thinking more about completion and graduation rates than we are about admissions, that's probably the way that we kind of reframed this whole conversation.

因此，如果我們能把焦點放在結業和畢業率，而不是錄取率，那這可能可以成為我們改變焦點甚至翻轉現況的契機。

Parents could also try to dampen their fascination with these institutions.

家長也可以嘗試消除一點對這些機構的迷戀。

Elite colleges aren't the only pathway into elite careers.

菁英大學不是通往成功事業的唯一道路。

That's not to say that a student can't be successful if they go to Texas State University where LBJ went to school.

並不是說一個去了德州州立大學的學生就不會成功，那正是前美國總統約翰遜畢業的大學。

It's not to say that students can't be successful if they attend University of Houston like Elizabeth Warren did.

並不是說一個去了休士頓大學的學生就不會成功，那正是今年的總統參選人沃倫畢業的大學。

Society probably shouldn't be looking at higher education as much as a zero-sum game as a stepping stone.

社會大概不應該把高等教育視為一個你輸我贏的零和博弈或是一個跳板。

I don't want them to think that the most important outcome of high school is where you go to college.

我不希望他們認為高中最重要的收穫就是大學的錄取通知。

I want them to have the approach that the most important outcome of high school and adolescence is really crafting, developing, nurturing the brain that you're gonna have for the rest of your life.

我希望他們能將高中生活和青少年成長階段視作一個塑造、發展、培養自己智力的地方，一個為未來人生做準備的地方。

Hey it's Adam.

我是 Adam。

I'm a staff writer at the Atlantic.

我是 Atlantic 的職業作家。

Thank you so much for watching this video, if you liked what you saw subscribe to our YouTube channel and also my Twitter @AdamHSays.

感謝你觀看這部影片，如果你喜歡的話，可以訂閱我們的頻道和追蹤我的推特帳號 @AdamHSays。