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  3. 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

admin2014-10-24  60
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.
Which of the following may be one guiding education principle of the University of Phoenix?
选项 A、Guaranteeing the free access to knowledge.
B、Concentrating on the cultivation of comprehensive qualities of students.
C、Being committed to practical education.
D、Facilitating class-based education with advanced internet technology.
答案C
解析 根据题干中的关键词University of Phoenix锁定文章第五段。这一段的中心句是前两句话：大学不仅内部危机重重，外部还面临来自互联网的冲击。现在互联网技术使得知识的传播不再局限于课堂，远程教育彻底改变了知识传播的模式。(“And for—profit companies such as the University of Phoenix arestripping out costs by concentrating on a handful of useful courses as well as making full use of theinternet．”)菲尼克斯大学的成功主要归功于两点：一是互联网技术的使用，二是专注于传授实用性很强的课程。据此，我们可以判断出[A]选项错误。菲尼克斯大学致力于实用知识的传播，但并不是免费提供知识。[B]选项与菲尼克斯大学的办学理念相违背，菲尼克斯大学强调学生对实用技能的掌握，而非学生综合素质的培养。[C]选项正确，教育实用性是凤凰大学成功的因素之一。[D]选项偷换概念，菲尼克斯大学充分利用了互联网技术，但并非使用互联网技术武装传统课堂，而是采用远程教育的方式展开教学。
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