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
外语
Barack Obama invited a puzzling group of people into the White House: university presidents. What should one make of these stran
Barack Obama invited a puzzling group of people into the White House: university presidents. What should one make of these stran
admin
2014-04-28
67
问题
Barack Obama invited a puzzling group of people into the White House: university presidents. What should one make of these strange creatures? Are they chief executives or labour leaders? Heads of pre-industrial guilds or champions of one of America’s most successful industries? Defenders of civilisation or merciless rack-renters?
Whatever they might be, they are at the heart of a political firestorm. Anger about the cost of college extends from the preppiest of parents to the grungiest of Occupiers. Mr. Obama is trying to channel the anger, to avoid being sideswiped by it. The White House invitation complained that costs have trebled in the past three decades. Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, has urged universities to address costs with "much greater urgency".
A 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 cancerous 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 rock walls 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 moulder: 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. In "Academically Adrift" Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa argue that over a third of America’s students show no improvement in critical thinking or analytical reasoning after four years in college.
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. Testing and marking can be automated. And for-profit companies such as the University of Phoenix are stripping out costs by concentrating on a handful of popular 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.
Many universities’ first instinct will be to batten down the hatches and wait for this storm to pass. But the storm is not going to pass. The higher-education industry faces a stark choice: either adapt to a rapidly changing world or face a future of cheeseparing. It is surely better to rethink the career structure of your employees than to see it wither (the proportion of professors at four-year universities who are on track to win tenure fell from 50% in 1997 to 39% ten years later). And it is surely better to reform yourself than to have hostile politicians take you into receivership.
A growing number of universities are beginning to recognise this. They understand that the beginning of wisdom in academia, as in business in general, is choosing what not to do. They are in recovery from their Ivy League envy. They are also striking up relations with private-sector organisations. And a growing number of foundations, such as the Kauffman Foundation, are doing their best to spread the gospel of reform and renewal.
What function does the third paragraph serve?
选项
A、It continues the analysis of the problem.
B、It confirms the seriousness of the problem.
C、It further explains the soaring cost.
D、It offers a cause for the rising cost.
答案
A
解析
篇章结构题。直接定位至第三段。首句指出“A sense of urgency is justified:ex-students have debts approaching $1 trillion.”,这是承接第二段末句“Arne Duncan,the secretary of education,has urged universities to address costs with‘much greater urgency’.”而来。第三段末句“And rising costs are often symptoms of much deeper problems:problems that were irritating during the years of affluence but which are cancerous in an age of austerity.”和第四段首句“The first problem is the inability to say‘no’.”又是一个顺承关系,可见第三段是一个承上启下的过渡段,对大学学费增加这一问题进行深入的分析,故[A]为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/KxpO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
TheMaoripeoplearenativesof
OnlineShoppingIncreasinglypopularwithadultsandyoungpeople,onlineshoppinggivesyou【1】______tovariousproductsand
OnlineShoppingIncreasinglypopularwithadultsandyoungpeople,onlineshoppinggivesyou【1】______tovariousproductsand
OnlineShoppingIncreasinglypopularwithadultsandyoungpeople,onlineshoppinggivesyou【1】______tovariousproductsand
A、intendstomeantwopolicemen.B、meanstwopolicemen.C、referstoapolicemanandapolicewoman.D、doesn’tputstressongende
Thebizarreanticsofsleepwalkershavepuzzledpolice,perplexedscientists,andfascinatedwritersforcenturies.Thereisan
PolicemanasaWriterIdecidedtobegintheterm’sworkwiththeshortstorysincethatformwouldbetheeasiestforthep
CatastrophicvolcaniceruptionsinEuropemayhaveculledNeanderthalstothepointwheretheycouldn’tbounceback,accordingt
随机试题
简述第二次世界大战后国家垄断资本主义大发展的原因。
患者,男性,56岁,糖尿病5年,近半年来食欲不振、疲乏失眠、夜尿增多(尿量<800ml/d),入院后查体,贫血貌,双下肢中度水肿,血压180/120mmHg.该患者最常见的症状
A.柏子B.鹅不食草C.柴胡D.大黄E.干漆通过炒或煅可以减少副作用的是()。
室内消火栓设置错误的是:
商品化会计核算软件开发经销单位提供的售后服务工作包括()。
个人理财业务的客户一般指自然人,包括()。
A公司为国有控股公司,适用的所得税税率为25%,预计在未来期间不会发生变化。2008年1月1日首次执行新会计准则。2008年1月1日经董事会和股东大会批准,于2008年1月1日开始对有关会计政策和会计估计作如下变更:(1)管理用固定资产的预计使用
你在自己工作以后的业余时间独立完成了一篇改革方案,交给上级领导征求意见后,就杳无音信了。后来发现这篇文章已经被发表了,但是署名却是你的领导。碰到这样的事情你会如何处理,特别是如何处理和这位领导的关系?
原型化生命周期提供了一个完整、灵活、近于动态需求定义技术,下述:(1)能综合用户所提出的必要的需求(2)对模型可进行必要的裁减和组织,使其接近目标系统(3)能综合最终用户、项目经理和原型开发人员各方要求(4)原型化方
SomeSchoolingonBackpacksAccordingtotheU.S.ConsumerProductSafetyCommission,5,900kidsweretreatedathospitale
最新回复
(
0
)