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  3. Nowadays, tens of thousands of recent graduates have found themselves on the unemployment line or stuck in jobs that don’t requi

Nowadays, tens of thousands of recent graduates have found themselves on the unemployment line or stuck in jobs that don’t requi

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问题     Nowadays, tens of thousands of recent graduates have found themselves on the unemployment line or stuck in jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree. Higher education has come under attack for its failure to make students job-ready. The following article is discussing the purpose of college education. Read it carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should:
    1. summarize the article briefly;
    2. give your comment.
    Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.
    College is now seen as a place where adolescents went to explore courses and majors before settling on a job and career, often well after graduating. College students have increasingly seen a bachelor’s degree as a means to an end: a job. Freshmen now list getting a better job as the most important reason to go to college. Previously, the top reason was learning about things that interest them.
    The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in traditional arts and sciences fields (English, math, and biology, for example) has tumbled from almost half of the undergraduate credentials awarded in 1968 to about a quarter now. Students and their families, faced with big tuition bills, want to be sure to pick a major that leads to a job after graduation. Colleges worried about filling seats have accommodated them by rolling out a bevy of practical majors, some in fields that didn’t even exist five years ago (think of a bachelor’s degree in Social Media, or perhaps even a master’s).
    Such trends worry those who advocate liberal arts studies and the idea that college should be a place to develop a foundational knowledge that provides lifetime benefits.
    Michael Roth—president of Wesleyan University, a prominent liberal-arts college in Connecticut—keeps a close eye on public opinion about this subject. He sometimes wonders how much of this disconnect between employers and higher education is a "manufactured moment." In his view, employers always have been unhappy with newly minted college graduates. The difference now is that we just survey them more frequently.
    "The erosion of the middle class," he said, "has put a lot more pressure on parents and students to make it big in the world or the consequences are terrible." When Roth graduated from college, his father, who didn’t go to college, wasn’t concerned if his son ended up driving a cab for a while to figure things out. Now coffee shop baristas with a philosophy degree are subjects of mockery.
    "The confidence that the economy offers enough opportunities has eroded," Roth said.
Even so, Roth believes universities like his, and higher education in general, can do better at preparing students for the job market without abandoning their traditional role to provide a broad education. Like other liberal arts colleges, Wesleyan is investing more in its career services.
But Roth is interested in making more fundamental changes to what happens in the classroom so that students better retain what they learn on the spot, and most important, are able to translate that learning for potential employers. He wants more courses to be project-based, for example, so that students better learn to work in teams and apply their knowledge to real-world problems as they’re learning.
    "It doesn’t matter what you take in college, it matters what you do," Roth said. "You should be able to show your teachers, and then anyone else, how what you’ve made in a class, what you created, demonstrates your capacity to do other things and what you’re going to do next."
    While he’s rethinking his own university, Roth said others are not without blame for the perceived disconnect between college and the workforce. Employers are less willing to take chances on graduates without narrowly tailored majors.
选项
答案 Academic Study Can Be Combined with Career Training It is widely accepted that college education nowadays is problematic. Graduates and parents relate a college degree to decent jobs, while employers complain that newly minted college graduates are not proficient. Thus colleges and universities are struggling to make a balance between the traditional education of liberal arts and sciences with vocational education. As is mentioned in the above article, Michael Roth thinks the disconnect between employers and higher education is nothing new. The reasons it attracts so much attention nowadays are: First, the middle class as a whole has eroded and greater pressure is put on the graduates to get a good job. Second, the economy at present is not promising and if a graduate does not have a satisfactory job, it is unlikely for him to find one later. Finally, employers are surveyed more frequently now so that their dissatisfaction with the newly graduates are more conspicuous. I do agree with Roth’s idea that higher education can do better to prepare students for the job market without abandoning the traditional role of providing a broad education. On the one hand, an ignorance of the needs of employers will definitely be harmful to the reputation of modem higher education. The purpose of education is not to cultivate book worms. On the other hand, it would also be violating the fundamental function of education if institutions only pay attention to the professional skills and ignore those basic humanistic aspects. In order to serve the society better, all higher education institutions must think about their goals 01 aims of education and develop their curricula accordingly. There surely exists some teaching that can satisfy both ends.
解析     题目给出的文章主要讲述了当下人们对大学教育目的的看法。文章主要有两方面内容：其一，无论是家长还是学生，普遍都认为上大学就是为了找好工作；其二，一名校长Michael Roth对该问题的分析，以及其对大学教育目的的看法。在概括时，考生只须抓住这两点内容即可，其中的难点是概括Michael Roth的观点。根据题目的要求，考生可采取以下的布局：
    第一段：简要总结当下人们对大学教育的普遍期望，以及大学面临的教育困境。
    第二段：总结Michael Roth提出引发大学教育争议的三方面原因。
    第三段：结合Michael Roth的观点，提出自己对该问题的看法：大学教育可以同时兼顾学术教育和职业技能培训。
    第四段：总结全文，重申观点。
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