A dispute that, according to MPs, threatens the very survival of London Metropolitan University, the capital’s biggest higher ed

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问题     A dispute that, according to MPs, threatens the very survival of London Metropolitan University, the capital’s biggest higher education institution, is spilling over on to London’s streets. Last week lorry drivers on Holloway Road in Islington watched as a group of students and staff picketed a meeting of London Met’s governors.
    "Save our Staff" and "London Met on the Roper" , a reference to the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Brian Roper, screamed the banners.
    The university, which has 34, 000 students, has long attracted controversy for the militancy of its staff and students, but the latest row is a more serious matter. This crisis is over an attempt by the Higher Education Funding Council to claw back more than £ 50m of money that London Met should not have received. It is believed that as many as 500 jobs could go as a result of the university having been overpaid for student dropouts since 2005, and the unions are furious, claiming at the same time that the university is being unfairly treated by Hefc but that neither the managers nor the governors have explored the alternatives to job cuts.
    " The University and College Union are very concerned that the Hefc regulations appear to discriminate against widening participation," said a UCU spokesperson. "But we also feel very strongly about the fact that the management are not consulting the unions as they are required to do in law and that they have not considered alternatives like a freeze on new appointments. "
    One of the issues in dispute is whether students who did not take their assessments at the end of the year but were intending to take them the following year should be classified as drop-outs. Hefc considers them to have dropped out and says that its funding definitions apply to all universities regardless; UCU believes they should not be classified in this way on the grounds that they need all the help they can get to complete the course.
    The dispute has also hit the House of Commons. An early day motion signed by MPs says that the scale of the cuts — an £ 18m reduction in teaching budgets and £ 38m in claw-backs for previous years — "throws the future viability of the university into doubt at a time when education and training are vital to the capital’s economic health".
Hefc is to take back over £ 50m from London Met, believing that, for years, the latter______.

选项 A、has practiced low standards of teaching
B、has overpaid its governors and staff
C、has been unfair to some instructors
D、has had lots of students quitting school

答案D

解析 细节推理题。题干中的Hefc是the Higher Education Funding Council的缩写,根据题干关键词take back over £50m,London Met定位到原文第三段第二句。再根据句中的关键词believing具体定位到第三段第三句。原句中的as many as与选项D中的lots of对应,dropouts与选项D中的quitting对应。故答案为D。
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