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
考研
Barack Obama invited a puzzling group of people into the White House on December 5th: university presidents. Whatever they might
Barack Obama invited a puzzling group of people into the White House on December 5th: university presidents. Whatever they might
admin
2013-06-26
62
问题
Barack Obama invited a puzzling group of people into the White House on December 5th: university presidents. Whatever they might be, they are at the heart of a political firestorm. Anger about the cost of college extends from the parents to Occupiers. Mr. Obama is trying to urge universities to address costs with " much greater urgency".
This sense of urgency is justified: ex-students have debts approaching $ 1 trillion. But calm reflection is needed too. America’s universities suffer from many maladies besides cost. And rising costs are often symptoms of much deeper problems; problems that were irritating during the years of affluence but which are fatal in an age of austerity.
The first problem is the inability to say "no". For decades American universities have been offering more of everything—more courses for undergraduates, more research students for professors and more athletics for everybody—on the merry assumption that there would always be more money to pay for it all. The second is Ivy League Envy. The vast majority of American universities are obsessed by rising up the academic hierarchy, becoming a bit less like Yokel-U and a bit more like Yale.
Ivy League Envy leads to an obsession with research. This can be a problem even in the best universities: students feel short-changed by professors fixated on crawling along the frontiers of knowledge with a magnifying glass. At lower-level universities it causes dysfunction. American professors of literature crank out 70,000 scholarly publications a year, compared with 13,757 in 1959. Most of these simply molder: Mark Bauerlein of Emory University points out that, of the 16 research papers produced in 2004 by the University of Vermont’s literature department, a fairly representative institution, 11 have since received between zero and two citations. The time wasted writing articles that will never be read cannot be spent teaching.
Popular anger about universities’ costs is rising just as technology is shaking colleges to their foundations. The internet is changing the rules. Star academics can lecture to millions online rather than the chosen few in person. And for-profit companies such as the University of Phoenix are stripping out costs by concentrating on a handful of useful courses as well as making full use of the internet. The Sloan Foundation reports that online enrolments grew by 10% in 2010, against 2% for the sector as a whole.
Nearly 100 years ago American universities faced similar worries about rising costs and detachment from the rest of society. Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard, argued that "Institutions are rarely murdered; they meet their end by suicide... They die because they have outlived their usefulness, or fail to do the work that the world wants done. " America’s universities quickly began " the work that the world wants done" and started a century of American dominance of higher education. They need to repeat the trick if that century is not to end in failure.
The word maladies is closest in meaning to______.
选项
A、disorders
B、disabilities
C、disadvantages
D、disagreement
答案
A
解析
首先在文中找到maladies一词出现的段落,是在文章的第二段。“Americas’universities suffer from many maladies besides cost.And rising costs are often symptoms of much deeper problems:problems that were irritating during the years of affluence but which are fatal in an age of austerity.”上文都在讨论美国大学学费上涨的问题,这里笔锋一转,指出成本问题只是美国大学众多的弊病之一,而且上升的成本只是一些更深层次问题的表征。因此,maladies一词在意思上应该接近于“问题,弊病”。[A]选择disorders表示“失调,紊乱”,是maladies的同义词,为正确答案。[B]选项disabilities表示“残疾”,比maladies的程度更重。[C]选项disadvantages是advantage的反义词,表示“缺点,不利条件”,这里主要讨论的并不是美国大学面临的不利条件,而是美国大学自身的一些弊病。[D]选项disagreement的意思相差太远。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/Jpd4777K
0
考研英语一
相关试题推荐
GregFocker,playedbyBenStiller,representsagenerationofAmericankids(1)_____inthe1980sonthephilosophythatanyac
Itwasthebiggestscientificgrudgematchsincethespacerace.TheGenomeWarshadeverything:twogroupswithappealingleade
Themeaningsof"science"and"technology"havechangedsignificantlyfromonegenerationtoanother.Moresimilaritiesthandif
InwhichaspectaretheUniversitiessuperiortotheUniversityCollegesandInstitutes?______WhatsimilaritiesdotheUnivers
Theauthorusedtheexampleofatraveler(Para.3)toshowthatThatextracost(Para.5)probablyrefersto
Accordingtothetext,thecareerofJackLindsayasawritercanbedescribedasTheimpactofJackLindsay’sideologicalatti
Lookingathowfarwe’llbeabletofundtheHealthServiceinthe21stcenturyraisesanynumberofthornyissues.(46)Manyof
Mostpeoplewhotravellongdistancecomplainofjetlag.Jetlagmakesbusinesstravelerslessproductiveandmoreprone【C1】_____
去工作还是继续深造,她感觉进退维谷。(furtherstudies,dilemma)
Lowlevelsofliteracyandnumeracyhaveadamagingimpactonalmosteveryaspectofadults,accordingtoasurveypublishedyes
随机试题
A.外感风邪B.血热妄行C.阴虚火旺D.气滞血瘀E.气不摄血紫癜鲜红,发热心烦,口渴便秘,应为
某综合利用水利枢纽工程位于我国西北某省,枯水期流量很少;坝型为土石坝,黏土心墙防渗;坝址处河道较窄,岸坡平缓。工程中的某分部工程包括坝基开挖、坝基防渗及坝体填筑,该分部工程验收结论为“本分部工程划分为60个单元工程,其中合格24个,优良36个。主
理事会的权利是()。
通常情况下,贝塔系数是用()来计算的。
1.该企业应纳进口环节增值税为( )。当月该企业应纳增值税税额为( )。
关于美术课程设计中,适合作为美术作业的是()。
《义务教育数学课程标准(2011年版)》有两类行为动词,其中一类是描述结果目标的行为动词,包括“了解”“理解”“掌握”“运用”,请以“平行四边形”概念为例,说明“理解”的基本含义。
世界上最早专门论述教育教学问题的著作是()。
古希腊雕塑大师米隆的代表作为__________。
教材的重点也是教材的难点和关键。()
最新回复
(
0
)