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  3. Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, put a plan to make higher education at public universities free at the cent

Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, put a plan to make higher education at public universities free at the cent

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问题     Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, put a plan to make higher education at public universities free at the centre of his upstart campaign for the presidency in 2015. The idea seemed radical, even gimmicky. Now some democrats oppose the notion, for example Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, and their arguments still pack a punch. Why indeed should taxpayers’ money be spent on the children of the rich rather than more generous financial aid for the poor?
    Across much of the rich world, a public-university education is free or nearly free, apart from the cost of books and living expenses. But those in America and Britain pay tuition fees which are high and growing higher. Places like America and Britain pass some of this increase on to students in the form of higher fees, with the understanding that poorer students will receive financial aid while richer ones will bear the full tuition bill.
    To many politicians in these places, this seems just. Unlike primary or secondary education, university is a minority pursuit in most advanced economies. Only about 45% of adults aged 25 to 34 have some post-secondary education. Those people tend to come from richer families. A universal programme that mostly benefits a well-off not-quite-half of the country would seem a strange aspiration for egalitarian-minded politicians. Better to target aid at those from poorer families.
    However, supporters of free university marshal a number of practical arguments. University attendees are more likely to come from wealthier families precisely because university is not free. Several analyses of the introduction of tuition fees in Britain found a negative effect on university attendance. A report produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated that an increase of ￡1,000 ($1,243) in tuition fees is associated with a decline of 3.9 percentage points in the rate at which recent school-leavers choose to go on to university. Work by Thomas Kane of Harvard University found a response of similar magnitude in America. And research by Susan Dynarski of the University of Michigan and Judith Scott-Clayton of Columbia University concludes that both attendance and completion rates are higher when education is more affordable.
    But the most powerful arguments for free university are about values rather than economic efficiency. There are broad social benefits to a well-educated citizenry, because new ideas allow society as a whole to prosper. Amid constant technological change, a standing offer of free higher education may represent an important component of the social safety-net. Universality reinforces the idea that free education is not a makeshift form of redistribution, but part of a system of collective insurance forming an egalitarian society.
In Paragraph 5, the author’s attitude towards free university is__________.
选项 A、suspicious
B、unconcerned
C、supportive
D、indecisive
答案 C
解析 根据题干关键词Paragraph 5可定位至第五段。该段第一句指出the most powerful arguments for free university are about values rather than economic efficiency．(免费高等教育最有力的论据是关于价值而非经济效率)，接下来作者表明，受过良好教育的公民可带来广泛的社会效益，新思想使整个社会得以繁荣，且长期的免费高等教育代表着社会保障网的一部分，是构成平等主义社会的重要组成部分，作者整段都在讲述免费高等教育的好处，由此可看出，作者对于免费高等教育持支持的态度。
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