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  3. Or Maybe Major in Comp Lit? Let’s not exaggerate: science and engineering are not the new Comp Lit or philosophy, those unde

Or Maybe Major in Comp Lit? Let’s not exaggerate: science and engineering are not the new Comp Lit or philosophy, those unde

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问题                     Or Maybe Major in Comp Lit?
    Let’s not exaggerate: science and engineering are not the new Comp Lit or philosophy, those under graduate majors for which employment prospects are so uncertain your parents practically beg you to go to a trade school instead. But about those claims that the nation suffers from a shortage of scientists and engineers—claims such as the National Science Foundation’s warning in 2004 of "an emerging and critical problem of the science and engineering labor force"— Vivek Wadhwa, founder of Relativity Technologies and executive in residence at Duke University, has a brief response-. "It’s a lie."
    So why do people keep telling you there’s such a shortage of scientists and engineers that you’ll have your pick of jobs? Partly because even a tiny shortfall in S&E leads policymakers and corporate giants to issue warnings of a kind no one does when the nation is short in, say, marketers. "Science and engineering are perceived as so crucial to our economic engine and national security, it’s easy to get people panicked over the possibility of a shortage," says demographer Michael Teitelbaum of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. But those who do not have a financial stake in getting more students to choose S&E are catching on. Science magazine recently noted " the striking discrepancy between the overfull market for early-career scientists and the numerous prestigious reports [about]... a looming shortage."
    So, first the good news for students drawn to S&E. The overall unemployment rate for scientists and engineers in the United States was a mere 2. 5 percent in 2006—the lowest since the early 1990s. Overall unemployment was 4. 7 percent.
    Now the bad news. Demand for scientists and, especially, engineers rises and falls more sharply and unpredictably than in any other sector. Unemployment was 2. 6 percent in 1993—and 50 percent higher in 2003 before it fell again. Even that undercounts the jobless: you’re not included if you gave up on finding a job in, say, electrical engineering and instead became a real estate agent. S&E jobs rise and fall for the same reasons they do in other sectors, including overall economic conditions, but also booms and busts in military spending, NASA projects and the budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy. A 2008 report by the RAND Corporation, requested by the office of the Secretary of Defense, concluded that " there is no evidence of a current shortage of S & E workers. " To their credit, students seem to have gotten wise to the mismatch between rhetoric and reality: bachelor’s degrees in S&E have been hovering at about 32 percent of undergrad degrees, compared with 35 percent in the1960s, as many students smart enough to master Hamiltonians or the Hardy-Weinberg Law realize they can put their brainpower to more profitable ends on, say, Wall Street.
Vivek Wadhwa’s criticism is on______.
选项 A、the irrationality of comparing S&E with other majors
B、the underestimated S&E employment prospects
C、the exaggerated shortage of S&E specialists
D、the overstated importance of S&E to the nation
答案C
解析 本题考查事实细节。文章开篇通过理工科专业与其它专业的比较，说明它的就业前景并非很不稳定(Let’s not exaggerate)。接下来用一个转折连词But转向另一个极端的说法：有人宣称理工科人才严重短缺(…suffers from a shortage of…)，并列举了一个此类说法的例子：国家科学基金会的警告。对于这种观点，威菲克·瓦德华的评论是：这是一个谎言。可见，威菲克·瓦德华认为理工科人才短缺的现象被过分夸大。[C]正确。解答此题的关键是分清段内意群，进行句子分析：以But为界第一段提到两个极端的观点，并分别有两个评论。[B]是对第一个观点的概括，该观点和威菲克．瓦德华的评价无关。文中提及其他专业只是为了说明理工科专业的就业前景并没有(和比较文学、哲学一样)不确定，文中未批判比较的合理性，排除[A]。关于理工科的重要性的论述出现在第二段，是为了分析夸大理工科人才短缺的原因，和威菲克·瓦德华的观点无关。[D]错误。
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