首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
For America’s colleges, January is a month of reckoning. Most applications for the next academic year beginning in the autumn ha
For America’s colleges, January is a month of reckoning. Most applications for the next academic year beginning in the autumn ha
admin
2011-03-10
63
问题
For America’s colleges, January is a month of reckoning. Most applications for the next academic year beginning in the autumn have to be made by the end of December, so a university’s popularity is put to an objective standard: how many people want to attend. One of the more unlikely offices to have been flooded with mail is that of the City University of New York (CUNY), a public college that lacks, among other things, a famous sports team, pastoral campuses and boisterous parties (it doesn’t even have dorms), and, until recently, academic credibility.
A primary draw at CUNY is a programmer for particularly clever students, launched in 2001. Some 1, 100 of the 60,000 students at CUNY’s five top schools receive a rare thing in the costly world of American colleges: free education. Those accepted by CUNY’s honors programmer pay no tuition fees; instead they receive a stipend of $7, 500 (to help with general expenses) and a laptop computer. Applications for early admissions into next year’s programme are up 70%.
Admission has nothing to do with being an athlete, or a child of an alunmus, or having an influential sponsor, or being a member of a particularly aggrieved ethnic group—criteria that are increasingly important at America’s elite colleges. Most of the students who apply to the honours programme come from relatively poor families, many of them immigrant ones. All that CUNY demands is that these students be diligent and clever.
Last year, the average standardised test score of this group was in the top 7% in the country. Among the rest of CUNY’s students averages are lower, but they are now just breaking into the top third (compared with the bottom third in 1997). CUNY does not appear alongside Harvard and Stanford on lists of America’s top colleges, but its recent transformation offers a neat parable of meritocracy revisited.
Until the 1960s, a good case could be made that the best deal in American tertiary education was to be found not in Cambridge or Palo Alto, but in Harlem, at a small public school called City College, the core of CUNY. America’s first free municipal university, founded in 1847, offered its services to everyone bright enough to meet its grueling standards.
City’s golden era came in the last century, when America’s best known colleges restricted the number of Jewish students they would admit at exactly the time when New York was teeming with the bright children of poor Jewish immigrants. In 1933—54 City produced nine future Nobel laureates, including the 2005 winner for economics, Robert Aumann (who graduated in 1950).
What went wrong? Put simply, City dropped its standards. It was partly to do with demography, partly to do with earnest muddle headedness. In the 1960s, universities across the country faced intense pressure to admit more minority students. Although City was open to all races, only a small number of black and Hispanic students passed the strict tests (including a future secretary of state, Colin Powell). That, critics decided, could not be squared with City’s mission to "serve all the citizens of New York". At first the standards were tweaked, but this was not enough, and in 1969 massive student protests shut down City’s campus for two weeks. Faced with upheaval, City scrapped its admissions standards altogether. By 1970, almost any student who graduated from New York’s high schools could attend.
The quality of education collapsed. At first, with no barrier to entry, enrolment climbed, but in 1976 the city of New York, which was then in effect bankrupt, forced CUNY to impose tuition fees. An era of free education was over, and a university which had once served such a distinct purpose joined the muddle of America’s lower-end education.
By 1997, seven out of ten first-year students in the CUNY system were failing at least one remedial test in reading, writing or moths ( meaning that they had not learnt it to high-school standard). A report commissioned by the city in 1999 concluded that "Central to CUNY’s historic mission is a commitment to provide broad access, but its students’ high drop-out rates and low graduation rates raise the question: Access to what?"
The paragraph that follows the text is probably about
选项
A、CUNY’s reforms.
B、CUNY’s fate.
C、CUNY’s commitment.
D、CUNY’s mission.
答案
A
解析
结构题。本文前四段指出CUNY吸引大批申请者的原因:a programme for particularly clever students,launched in 2001。提到城市大学的录取标准是All that CUNY demands is that these students be diligent and clever。第五段开始回顾该大学的历史。20世纪60年代以前,它是美国高等教育学府中管理最好的大学。第七段通过一个问句What went wrong?引出对20世纪60年代该大学面临的问题的说明。由于彻底废除了所有入学标准,教学质量骤然下降,导致了第八段末的结果:城市大学成为美国的低端教育。最后一段对当时CUNY的教育现状进行说明,末句中的students’ high drop-out rates and low graduation rates这种情况引起了人们思考“Access to what?”显然对“提供什么教育?”这个问题思考的结果就是进行改革,而改革必然会出现文章前四段提到的推出honours programmes的策略,从而达到教育质量上升这种结果。[A]符合英文篇章行文特点,故为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/2DYO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
TheUnitedStateshasamajorracialproblemonitshands.True,Britainisfacingasimilarproblem,butforthetime,beingit
Theyearwhichprecededmyfather’sdeathmadegreatchangeinmylife.IhadbeenlivinginNewJersey,workingindefenseplan
Sinceabout1950,publictransportationintheU.S.hashadtostruggletosurvive.Thegrowthofprivateautomobileownership,
Degradationcanbeillustratedbythefollowingexample______.
AcupunctureRecently,acupuncturehasbecomea【1】______wordinAmerica.【1】______Acupuncturewasperformedi
在我国社区教育的发展中,政府统筹是重要保证,要始终充分依靠政府的领导和有效管理,统筹安排、合理配置社区教育资源区分社区教育中的非功利性教育与功利性教育,非功利性教育是社区教育的本质体现,功利性教育是社区教育的重要组成组建高效运作的社区教育实体,发挥龙头作用
ThereisagreatconcerninEuropeandNorthAmericaaboutdecliningstandardsofliteracyinschools.InBritain,thefactthat
"VisualMusic"isafine-tuned,highlydiverting,deceptivelyradicalexhibitionabouttherelationshipofmusicandmodernart,
Linguistically,comparedwiththewritingsofMarkTwain,HenryJames’sfictionisnotedforhis______.
Thescienceofwildlifemanagementisactuallyquitenew.Itisthethirdmajorphaseoftheoriginalconservationmovement.The
随机试题
设z=esinxy,则dz=().
男性,44岁。因食入烙饼,食管静脉破裂出血约1000ml,输入大量库存血后,出现心率缓慢、手足抽搐、血压下降、伤口渗血。出现以上症状的有关因素是()。
债券的承销可采取包销和代销方式,承销或者自行组织的销售,销售期最长不得超过( )日。
行政复议,是指公民、法人或者其他组织认为行政主体的具体行政行为违法或不当侵犯其合法权益,依法向主管行政机关提出复查该具体行政行为的申请,行政复议机关依照法定程序对被申请的具体行政行为进行合法性、适当性审查,并作出裁决的活动。根据上述定义,下列属于行政复议行
遵义会议是中国共产党历史上一个生死攸关的转折点。
设y=y(x)由yexy+xcosx-1=0确定,则dy|x=0=_______。
A、 B、 C、 D、 B集中式是所有数据片段都安排在一个场地上;分割式是所有全局数据有且只有一份。它们被分割成若于片段,每个片段被分配在一个特定的场地上;混合式是全局数据被分为若干个数据子集,每个子集被安排
在逻辑结构设计中,关系虽已达到规范化,但因某些属性过多时,可将它分为两个或多个关系模式,这叫做
在双绞线组网的方式中,______是以太网的中心连接设备。
在软件测试设计中,软件测试的主要目的是
最新回复
(
0
)