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  3. In a country with a shrinking population, the latest trend in Germany’s higher education is something of a mystery: the number o

In a country with a shrinking population, the latest trend in Germany’s higher education is something of a mystery: the number o

admin2012-04-09  51
问题     In a country with a shrinking population, the latest trend in Germany’s higher education is something of a mystery: the number of universities and academic programs is rising. The growth is the sharpest for professional graduate schools, where the number has soared from practically zero in 2003 to 130 now, in fields ranging from law and business to clinical counseling and education. But there is one obvious problem: not enough students are signing up. The German government says that nearly half of professionally oriented programs, aside from law schools, have yet to fill their stated student capacity. And the problem has been especially acute in graduate programs in education.
    Interest in many professional schools has been less than overwhelming, said Markus Zimmermann, an executive senior consultant at the Germany Research Institute in Berlin, which is affiliated with Berliner Banking Corp. "German universities tend to roll out programs without having a good grasp of the needs in the marketplace," said Mr. Zimmermann, who watches Germany’s higher education. "When they start a program, they assume there will be students."
    In German, the need for graduate programs seems undeniable: lifetime employment is crumbling, employers are committing less time and money to training young workers, and social problems are becoming more complex, increasing the need for experts. Setting up graduate programs in education was the universities’ answer to a growing dissatisfaction with the primary and secondary school system.
    In 2008, with the accreditation (批准) of the Ministry of Education, 19 universities launched professionally oriented graduate programs in teacher education, seeking approximately 700 students in total. Seven more schools introduced similar programs a year later. During the first year, 8 of the 19 original institutions fell short of the target enrollment—some by far: two schools managed to recruit only half of the target numbers of students. A ministry assessment completed shortly afterward said the schools lacked proper marketing methods and had failed to clearly state the practical benefits of receiving graduate diplomas.
    Some schools are taking their own measures to increase enrollment. They have gone around visiting undergraduate departments giving explanatory sessions and did what they could to let people know about their programs. The graduate school has also been placing an emphasis on practical training, for example, sending students to teach at local primary and secondary schools. Students teach lessons at local schools, videotape the classes and then bring the tapes back for evaluation with other students. Then they feed the solutions back to the classes. A number of graduate students have had years of teaching experience before coming to the graduate programs, and generally held positive views about the in-class training.
According to Markus Zimmermann, why do people lack interest in German’s professional graduate schools?
选项 A、They feel overwhelmed by the pressure of graduate study.
B、They are faced with griping and complicated issues in schools.
C、They see it unnecessary to have graduate study in these programs.
D、They attach more importance to practical ability than academic research.
答案C
解析 细节推断题。第二段引用了德国研究所资深顾问Zimmermann的话指出，人们对研究生教育兴致不高，因为这些教育项目的推出之初并没有对市场需求进行调查，相关部门只是想当然地认为肯定能够招到学生。由此可以推断，人们觉得这些项目的研究生学习并无必要，因此答案为C)。
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