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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 t

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

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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 distinctive features of American higher education prior to the most recent, disorderly 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.
    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 the 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.
    This 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?
According to the text, one of American colleges’ goals used to be______.
选项 A、providing vocational skills
B、resolving societal problems
C、producing "productive" graduates
D、imparting knowledge to students
答案D
解析 根据题干信号词one of American college’goals和use to可回文定位到首段第一句In the past，American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose toadvance learning and to offer a chance to become familiar with bodies of language alreadydiscovered to those who wished it(在过去，美国大学的设立是为了两个目的：一是促进知识更新，二是给那些渴望学习的人一个掌握大量已知知识的机会)和第二句To create and to impart，these were the distinctive features of American higher education prior to the most recent，disorderly decades of the twentieth century(创新与传授知识这两点是美国高等教育在二十世纪最近混乱的几十年之前的鲜明特征)，这两句话都在说美国大学在过去的目标：“促进知识更新”(即“创新”)和“给别人学习知识的机会”(即“传授知识”)，据此可知D项(传授知识给学生)是正确答案。请考生注意offer(offer sth．to sb．)在原文的用法：offer a chance…to those…。
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