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  3. In the past, American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose — to advance learning and to offer a chance

In the past, American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose — to advance learning and to offer a chance

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问题     In the past, American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose — to advance learning and to offer a chance to become familiar with bodies of knowledge already discovered to those who wished it. To create and to impart, these were the hallmarks of American higher education prior to the most recent, tumultuous decades of the twentieth century. The successful institution of higher learning had never been one whose mission could be defined in terms of providing vocational skills or as a strategy for resolving societal problems. In a subtle way Americans believed postsecondary education to be useful, but not necessarily of immediate use.
    Another purpose has now been assigned to the mission of American colleges and universities. Institutions of higher learning — public or private — commonly face the challenge of defining their programs in such a way as to contribute to the service of the community.
    This service role has various applications. Most common are programs to meet the demands of regional employment markets, to provide opportunities for upward social and economic mobility, to achieve racial, ethnic, or social integration, or more generally to produce "productive" as compared to "educated" graduates. Regardless of its precise definition, the idea of a service-university has won acceptance within the academic community.
    One need only be reminded of the change in language describing the two-year college to appreciate the new value currently being attached to the concept of a service-related university. The traditional two-year college has shed its pejorative "junior" college label and is generally called a "community" college, a clearly value-laden expression representing the latest commitment in higher education. Even the doctoral degree, long recognized as a required "union card" in the academic world, has come under severe criticism as the pursuit of learning for its own sake and the accumulation of knowledge without immediate application to a professor’s classroom duties. The idea of a college or university that performs a triple function — communicating knowledge to students, expanding the content of various disciplines, and interacting in a direct relationship with society — has been the most important change in higher education in recent years.
    The novel development, however, is often overlooked. Educators have always been familiar with those parts of the two-year college curriculum that have a "service" or vocational orientation. It is important to know this. But some commentaries on American postsecondary education tend to underplay the impact of the attempt of colleges and universities to relate to, if not resolve, the problems of society. What’s worse, they obscure a fundamental question posed by the service-university— what is higher education supposed to do?
Judging from the context, the word "pejorative" (para 4) most probably means________.
选项 A、ambiguous
B、obscure
C、disapproving
D、uncommon
答案C
解析 态度题。本题看似为词汇题，实则为态度题。本段中做了two-year college价值的前后对比：传统的两年制大学以前是“初级”学院标签，通常被称为“社区”学院，显然这是对其价值的贬低。因此这里表达的态度为disapproving。ambiguous“模棱两可”，obscure“隐晦的”，uncommon“非同寻常的”，故正确答案为C。
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