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
28
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
WhenMarineLt.AlanZarracinafinallydidthesplitsaftermonthsofstrugglingwiththedifficultposeinyogaclass,thelimb
Accordingtothetext,themaindifferencebetweenamultinationalcorporationandasmallbusinessliesinWemayconcludefro
Beforeyouleaveuniversityyouwanttosellyourcomputer.Writeanoteofabout100words:1)describingtheconditionof
Pleasewriteanoticeaboutholdingashort-termoralEnglishclassduringthesummerholidays.Yournoticeshouldcoverthesef
Whenyoungpeoplewhowanttobejournalistsaskmewhatsubjecttheyshouldstudyafterleavingschool,Itellthem:"Anything
TheauthorwoulddescribetheReisses’lifeasTheexampleofthepublicistisusedtoshowmostpeople’s
Illiteracymaybeconsideredmoreasanabstractconceptthanacondition.WhenafamousEnglishwriterusedthe(1)_____overt
Americanseat______astheyactuallyneedeveryday.
Anewstudyfindsthatblacksondeathrow【1】ofkillingwhitesaremorelikelytobeexecutedthanwhiteswhokillminorities.I
"TheimpulsetoexcessamongyoungBritonsremainsaspowerfulasever,buttheforcethatusedtokeeptheimpulseincheckhas
随机试题
张某的物品被某机关依法扣押,行政机关委托第三人保管,因第三人的原因造成该物品丢失,为此张某主张要求赔偿,以下正确的说法是:()
下列关于贫血的论述,正确的是
A.面色晦暗,双颊紫红,口唇发绀B.表情淡漠,反应迟钝,呈无欲状态C.眼裂增大,眼球突出,目光闪烁,呈惊恐貌D.面色苍白,颜面水肿E.面色潮红,兴奋不安,口唇干燥典型伤寒面容的特点是()
甲乙双方签订了一份货物买卖合同,并在合同中约定了仲裁条款。后来该合同损害社会公共利益而无效。乙方根据合同中约定的仲裁条款向仲裁机构申请仲裁,要求甲方赔偿因合同无效造成的损失;甲方则向仲裁委员会提出异议,认为该仲裁条款随着合同的无效已失去效力。在此种情况下,
关于物权请求权,下列表述中正确的有:()
对图3-208所示结构的“几何组成分析”哪项正确?[2004年第23题]
《电子支付指引(第一号)》和《银行卡业务管理办法》都属于支付结算的主要法律依据。()
操作风险评估准备不包括()步骤。
下列选项中不属于软件生命周期开发阶段任务的是()。
若有定义语句:doublea,*p=&a;以下叙述中错误的是
最新回复
(
0
)