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
50
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.
The italicized "students feel short-changed by professors" (Para. 5) probably means
选项
A、students worry about what professors do research on.
B、students feel it doesn’t pay to study at university.
C、students are obsessed with too much research.
D、students suffer from different mental problems.
答案
B
解析
语义题。由题干直接定位至第五段。首句指出“Ivy League envy leads to an obsession with research.”,从第四段最后两句可以看出这是问题产生的根源之一。本题所在句子为“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.”,结合本段倒数第二句“The time wasted writing articles that will never be read cannot be spent teaching.”可以判断,这里是说教授们把教学时间浪费在写那些没人会去看的文章上,让学生们颇有不值当的感觉,故[B]为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/OxpO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
A、registerwithauniversityB、paythefullcostinadvanceC、studyinBritainatleast6monthsD、beregisteredonatleast6c
AnEnglishnewspaperiscurrentlyrunningadiscussiononwhetheryoungpeopleinChinatodayare(not)moreself-centredandun
TheMaoripeoplearenativesof
OnlineShoppingIncreasinglypopularwithadultsandyoungpeople,onlineshoppinggivesyou【1】______tovariousproductsand
AboutWetlandsintheU.S.A.Peopleenjoyafamoussoup(SHE-CRABSOUP)inNorthCarolinabecausethedaysoftheregionalso
Accordingtothenews,whyhastheseniorpoliceofficerresigned?
Thebizarreanticsofsleepwalkershavepuzzledpolice,perplexedscientists,andfascinatedwritersforcenturies.Thereisan
PolicemanasaWriterIdecidedtobegintheterm’sworkwiththeshortstorysincethatformwouldbetheeasiestforthep
PolicemanasaWriterIdecidedtobegintheterm’sworkwiththeshortstorysincethatformwouldbetheeasiestforthep
随机试题
给定程序中,函数fun的功能是将a和b所指的两个字符串转换成面值相同的整数,并进行相加作为函数值返回,规定字符串中只含9个以下数字字符。例如,主函数中输入字符串:32486和12345,在主函数中输出的函数值为:44831。请在程序的下
生命与群落的相同特征是()
A.异常活动B.功能障碍C.呼吸困难D.持续高热E.血压降低开放性骨折并发感染的主要表现是
下列有关疾病监测的论述错误的是
李天志与妻子朱兰、女儿李梅(11周岁)一家三口住在贫困山村。为脱贫致富,1998年12月李天志分别向信用社和复员军人张海借款1万元,写下欠条1万元,共计3万元,购买邻村一台旧卡车开始货运业务。1999年1月,在尚未办理各项车辆运输保险的情况下。李天志冒着下
l.如何确定成交样?
以下关于封闭式证券投资基金与开放式证券投资基金的区别的论述,不正确的是( )。
A、 B、 C、 D、 B
设有以下过程:PrivateSubproc(xAsInteger,OptionalyAsInteger)Printx,yEndSub针对此过程,下面正确的过程调用语句是
打开考生文件夹下的演示文稿yswg.pptx,按照下列要求完成对此文稿的制作:演示文稿播放的全程需要有背景音乐。
最新回复
(
0
)