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  3. Social mobility in the U. K. could be reversed unless the government and universities make changes to encourage and pay for more

Social mobility in the U. K. could be reversed unless the government and universities make changes to encourage and pay for more

admin2015-10-21  47
问题     Social mobility in the U. K. could be reversed unless the government and universities make changes to encourage and pay for more students from disadvantaged backgrounds to take degrees, according to the government’s independent adviser on the issue. Alan Milburn said in a report that social mobility was now "flatlining at best" after gains in the early part of the last decade.
    "Given the headwinds that universities and higher education institutions are facing—tuition fees, student caps, public funding constraints—there’s a real danger things will go backwards, rather than forwards," Milburn told the Guardian. "As the economy changes, who gets into university does become a very important driver of social mobility. "
    The report recommends changes across government policy and the way universities select, fund and encourage students from more disadvantaged areas, who he argues have been shown to do better at university than pupils from private schools with the same grades. Suggestions include offering all students from poorer backgrounds an interview and considering offering places to those with lower grades. Acknowledging pressure on public spending during the recession, Milburn calls on all parties to commit to government funding for higher education rising from 1. 2% currently to 1.5% , the average for the OECD group of advanced economies.
    The former Labour MP and cabinet member, who was the first person in his family to go to university, said social mobility created "falters as well as risers", echoing candid comments by the Liberal Democrat business secretary, Vince Cable, who told an audience on Wednesday that social mobility was often a "two-way street" and "a zero-sum game". "We want everyone to move up and no one to move down," said Cable. "But in the real world not everyone can be a star. Social mobility is often embodied in the comprehensive school pupil who reaches Oxbridge, but what about the school dropout who finished up in a lowly menial job? That is also social mobility. But this is surely what meritocracy is all about—success through hard work, not through birth."
    Milburn’s report says universities spend more than ￡400m to soften the impact of higher tuition fees on students from poorer backgrounds, but says there is little evidence that it is well spent, and calls for deep changes. It advocates that money is spent not just on reducing fees but helping to fund poorer students, and calls for a new version of the scrapped Educational Maintenance Allowance, intended to help poorer pupils remain in school to do A-levels. Universities are asked to agree to use "contextual data" when assessing applications to give pupils from worse schools a better chance, even if they have lower grades. Because some universities—especially from the Russell Group of higher ranked institutions—have objected to such a move in the past, Milburn offers them alternatives, including running new programmes to assess and prepare school-leavers, such as summer schools, and guaranteeing interviews to pupils from schools in disadvantaged areas.
    Ministers are urged to scrap a cap on student numbers, which Milburn calls an artificial limit on aspiration, and to better explain the tuition fees policy, under which students start repaying their loans when their earnings rise above a certain threshold. One option would be to rename the policy a graduate tax, which it is "in all but name", says Milburn, though he says it might be too late for that. He also calls for more funding for post-graduates, probably through upfront loans, saying the issue is "in danger of becoming a social mobility timebomb".
    The proposal to re-introduce the EMA was widely welcomed by social and education organizations, including the children’s charity Barnados, which said it had evidence that children were having to choose between the cost of breakfast and their bus fare to school. The left-of-centre IPPR thinktank welcomed the report’s suggestion that "we should look at applying the lessons of the pupil premium in schools to the university sector, with more funding being provided to institutions if they recruit from disadvantaged backgrounds".
According to Alan Milburn’s report, which of the following is the current situation of social mobility?
选项 A、It has been reversed.
B、It hasn’t any changes nowadays.
C、It hasn’t had any changes since the past decades.
D、Government and universities pay for more students to take degrees.
答案B
解析 细节题。第一段末尾Alan Milburn在报告中提到如今的社会流动性是“flatlining at best”。解题关键在于对“flatlining”这个词的理解，“flat”指“平的”，由此可推测“flatlining”也有“平的，直线的”之义，暗示如今的社会流动性变化不大，故选[B]。第一段第一句表明社会流动性是可以变化的，但条件是政府和大学要做出相应的政策调整，故排除[A]；第一段最后一句表明社会流动性在辉煌的十年之后归于“扁平状态”，可推断社会流动性在过去的十年内取得了相当辉煌的成绩，故排除[C]；[D]中政府和大学资助更多的学生读取学位是社会流动性发生变化的条件，并非社会流动性的现状，故排除。
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