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  3. It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future

It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future

admin2013-09-16  49
问题     It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill. That’s why, President Obama declared that "If we want more good news on the jobs front then we’ve got to make more investments in education. " But what everyone knows is wrong. The fact is that since 1990 or so the U. S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by "hollowing out": both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs — the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class — have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider; many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.
    Why is this happening? The belief that education is becoming ever more important rests on the plausible-sounding notion that advances in technology increase job opportunities for those who work with information. However, some economists argued that this was the wrong way to think about it. Computers, they pointed out, excel at routine tasks, "cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules. " And here’s the thing: Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate. Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized.
    And then there’s globalization. Once, only manufacturing workers needed to worry about competition from overseas, but research by Alan Blinder and Alan Krueger suggests that high-wage jobs performed by highly educated workers are, if anything, more "offshorable" than jobs done by low-paid, less-educated workers. If they’re right, growing international trade in services will further hollow out the U, S. job market.
    So what does all this say about policy? Yes, we need to fix American education. In particular, the inequalities Americans face at the starting line — bright children from poor families are less likely to finish college than much less able children of the affluent -- aren’t just an outrage; they represent a huge waste of the nation’s human potential.
    But there are things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen. We can’t just give workers college degrees, which may be no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.
In the author’s opinion, American education______.
选项 A、fails to fulfill its responsibility in building a prosperous society
B、mistakenly emphasizes advances in technology
C、is conventionally downgraded in its significance
D、has been overestimated in its importance to economic prosperity
答案D
解析 第一段作者先指出：“教育是取得经济成功的关键”是条举世公认的真理，接着作者对此予以反驳：美国劳动力市场的根本问题不是缺乏技能。第四、五段作者进一步指出：仅凭改善教育并不能实现美国经济的繁荣。可见，作者认为教育对经济繁荣的重要性被高估了，[D]选项正确。
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