教育部新推出的“不伤害”测试，其名称和前提都是保守派应该喜欢的。其逻辑是：如果某个证书或大学项目的毕业生收入不高于仅持有高中文凭的人，那么这些项目就被证明是糟糕的投资，华盛顿应停止通过学生贷款为其提供资助。经过几十年大学涨价、学生背负债务，某种问责机制已过期待。对“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）基本盘而言，任何能打击那些被广泛描绘为自由派、觉醒派和精英派的教育机构的举措，都会引发宣泄式的快感。
The Department of Education’s new “Do No Harm” test has a name — and a premise — that conservatives should love. The logic goes that if graduates of a certificate or college program do not out-earn those with only a high-school diploma, then those programs have proven to be a bad investment, and Washington should stop enabling them through student loans. After decades in which colleges raised prices and students were saddled with debt, some accountability is overdue. And for the MAGA base, anything that sticks it to educational institutions broadly painted as liberal, woke and elite will provoke cathartic glee.
问题在于，当人们阅读教育部自己的预测时会发现，大学学位项目轻松通过了这项测试，但许多培养出一代代小企业创业者的蓝领短期职业项目——特朗普政府声称要捍卫的那类人——却无法通过。好消息是，国会可以通过一项修正案来纠正这个问题，且有到2028年的时间来完成。要了解这项测试如何产生分化，只需看一位教育部长琳达·麦克马洪格外熟悉的创业者案例：琳达·麦克马洪本人。
The problem comes when one reads the department’s own projections, which show that college degree programs pass this test with flying colors, but many of the blue-collar short career programs that have minted generations of small business entrepreneurs — the kinds of people that the Trump administration claims to champion — do not. The good news is that Congress can correct the issue with a single amendment, and it has until 2028 to do so. To see how the test breaks down, consider just one entrepreneur whose career Secretary of Education Linda McMahon knows unusually well: Linda McMahon herself.
麦克马洪1969年从东卡罗来纳大学毕业，获得法语学位和教师资格证。她曾做过法律助理以补贴家用，同时丈夫在职业摔角界摸索门道。这是一段创业旅程的序章，最终让她的家庭实现了美国梦。但毕业四年后——即她所在部门的规定衡量毕业生收入的时间点——麦克马洪的薪资单上几乎看不出未来经济巨头的迹象。一度她还靠食品券度日。
McMahon graduated from East Carolina University in 1969 with a degree in French and a teaching certificate. She worked as a paralegal to pay the bills while her husband learned the ropes in professional wrestling. It was the prelude to an entrepreneurial journey that would end with her family achieving the American Dream. But four years after graduation — the point at which her department’s rule measures graduates’ earnings — there was little in McMahon’s paycheck to suggest an economic titan in the making. At one point she was on food stamps.
1976年，她和丈夫申请了破产保护。但随后在1980年，他们创办了泰坦体育公司，该公司最终发展成为WWE，如今创造数十亿美元收入，雇佣数千名美国人。
In 1976, she and her husband filed for bankruptcy. But then in 1980, they founded Titan Sports, the company that eventually became WWE, which today generates billions of dollars, and employs thousands of Americans.
我经营小企业，也投资其他小企业。其中许多企业申请了小企业管理局贷款，这正是麦克马洪担任该局局长时所监管的贷款类型。因此她理应清楚，在创建或收购公司的早期阶段，负责任的所有者往往做的正是“最大化个人收入”的反面：他们保留营运资金、偿还债务、雇佣员工、购置设备、将利润再投资。真正的价值来自企业本身的增值及其向投资者支付的股息——“不造成损害”公式两者皆未涵盖。
I run small businesses and invest in others. Many of them take out Small Business Administration loans of the kind McMahon oversaw when she was head of the agency. She would therefore know that in the early years of building or acquiring a company, a responsible owner is often doing exactly the opposite of maximizing personal income. She is preserving working capital, servicing debt, hiring employees, buying equipment, and reinvesting profits. The real value comes from the appreciation of the business itself and the dividends it pays investors — neither of which the “Do No Harm” formula captures.
事实上，培养企业家数量最多的证书项目——烹饪服务、按摩疗法、美容美发、艺术与设计——正是在新规则下面临最大失败风险的项目。以美容美发为例，从业者依法必须完成该项目才能入行，预计超过 90% 的项目将不合格并可能关闭，给该行业带来生存危机。这对从业者显然不公平，对无法将理发需求转交给 AI 代理的消费者也不公平。
In fact, the credential programs that create the greatest number of entrepreneurs — culinary services, massage therapy, cosmetology, arts and design — are the ones at greatest risk of failure under the new rule. In the case of cosmetology, a program that stylists are required by law to complete to enter the profession, more than 90 percent of programs are projected to fail and perhaps close, creating an existential crisis for the profession. That’s obviously not fair to the workers, or to the consumers who cannot hand off their haircuts to AI agents.
但为何工人要去攻读一个无法帮助他们提高工资的证书项目？这个问题同样可以抛给那些可能同样会被这项立法重创的研究生学位项目从业者：牧师和教师。正如站在会众面前见证信仰、站在青少年面前激励他们求知的人所深知：生命的意义不止于金钱积累，服务的价值不止于纳税申报单上的数字，职业的内涵不止于为亚马逊搬运纸箱。
But why would a worker pursue a certificate program that doesn’t help them earn a higher wage? It’s a question one could post to those in post-graduate degree programs that may be also clobbered by this legislation: ministers and teachers. As anyone who stands before a congregation bearing witness to faith, or in front of young people inspiring them to learn, there is more to life than the accumulation of money, more to service than what appears on a tax return, and more to a career than stacking cardboard boxes for Amazon.
撇开在 AI 紧迫追问未来几代人将从就业中获得何种目的之际、拥有一份充实愉快的职业所具有的价值不谈，联邦贷款为何要资助那些无法使周收入最大化的职业追求？
Putting aside the value of a fulfilling and enjoyable career at a time when AI urgently asks us what purpose future generations may derive from employment, why should federal loans help people pursue careers that don’t maximize the number of dollars earned in a week?
答案是：因为它们直接支持政府的鼓励生育议程。特朗普总统和万斯副总统都曾表示，希望美国人多生孩子。这些项目培养出的个体创业者大多是女性，这些职业让她们能自主安排工时，而当育儿负担不成比例地落在母亲肩上时，这对抚养家庭至关重要。作为年幼孩子的家长，我深感当前托育危机给职场家庭发展带来的压力。
Answer: because they directly support the administration's pro-natal agenda. Both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have said they want Americans to have more babies. The solopreneurs who come out of these programs are mostly women and these careers allow them to set their own hours, which is crucial for raising a family when the burden of childcare disproportionately falls on mothers. As a parent of young children, I feel the pressure that our current childcare crisis has on limiting the growth of working families.
这项规则将使情况恶化。幼教工作者的全国薪资中位数接近 2.7 万美元。教育部自己的数据预测，人类发展证书项目中 77% 的学生就读的项目将无法通过。这既荒诞又残酷：国家要求工人取得资质，通过补贴公式和最低配员要求决定他们的工资，随后又惩罚培养出接受该工资人员的学校。后果是：随着托育服务枯竭，更多夫妇将质疑自己是否负担得起组建家庭。
This rule will make it worse. Early-childhood educators earn a national median near $27,000. The department's own data projects that 77 percent of students in the human-development certificate programs attend programs what would fail. This is as Kafkaesque as it is cruel: the state requires a worker to earn a credential, determines their wages through subsidy formulas and minimum staffing requirements, then punishes their schools for producing someone who accepts the wage. The net: as childcare dries up, more couples will wonder if they can afford to have families at all.
国会可以通过为毕业生债务适度——联邦和私人贷款合计中位数低于 2 万美元——且有偿还记录的项目设立“安全港”来修正规则、规避这些问题。此类项目仍应为透明起见披露毕业生收入数据，但适度的收入搭配适度且成功偿还的债务，不应触发联邦贷款禁令。这并非新想法，教育部此前曾采用债务收入比测试。毕竟，正如任何企业家所知，不同时考察回报与投入，就无法真正衡量“投资回报率”。保守派尤其应懂得：被打破的东西，不易重建。
Congress can fix the rule and avoid these problems by creating a safe harbor for programs whose graduates carry modest debt — under $20,000 at the median, federal and private combined — and have a track record of repaying it. Such programs should still disclose data on the earnings of its graduates in the interest of transparency, but modest earnings combined with modest, successfully repaid debt should not trigger a federal lending ban. This is not a new idea, as the department previously used a debt-to-earnings test. After all, as any entrepreneur knows, one cannot truly measure "return on investment" without looking at both at the return and the investment. Conservatives above all should understand that what breaks is not easily rebuilt.
一个在某一年停止招收新生的项目，可能永远不会重新开放，因为教职人员会四散离去，学校辅导员不再推荐学生，雇主也不再招募实习生。国会有到2028年的时间来解决这个问题——在那时，它本会关闭的学校仍在运营。内特·布鲁斯基是一位居住在明尼苏达州的企业家和小企业投资人。他担任哈佛大学公共领导力中心顾问委员会主席。
A program that stops accepting new students in a given year may never reopen as faculty scatter, school counselors stop sending students, and employers stop recruiting interns. Congress has until 2028 to fix it — while the schools it would close are still open. Nate Bruschi is an entrepreneur and small business investor living in Minnesota. He serves as chair of the Advisory Council at Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership.