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  3. A proposal for a new university in Canada recently caught my eye for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that its stude

A proposal for a new university in Canada recently caught my eye for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that its stude

admin2015-07-05  41
问题     A proposal for a new university in Canada recently caught my eye for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that its students wouldn’t have majors. Instead, the students would be able to " distinguish themselves through practical and demonstrable skills in four areas of focus—technology, entrepreneurship/management, health professions, and creative industries. "
    For most college students, the idea of a major is outdated in a 21st Century economy in a constant state of flux. College majors are for the most part an organizing function for the faculty of an institution who wants to have departments for their academic disciplines.
    Sure, students need a structured curriculum to follow in order to get the classes they need to take a licensing exam or apply to medical school, but most majors don’t have such specific requirements.
    Most 18-year-olds have no idea what they want to be when they grow up (many adults don’t, either, of course). But you can get many would-be college students to talk quite passionately about what they want to fix in the world. From such conversations, you can imagine a whole set of courses at almost any college that would engage such students but don’t fit neatly into a major’s bucket: find renewable sources of energy: bring water to the drought-stricken West: improve the delivery of news around the world.
    As high-school students tour campuses this summer or their older counterparts get ready to start college this fall, instead of asking them their majors, we should ask them one simple question: What problems do you want to solve?
    Stanford University recently called such a pathway, " purpose learning". As part of a yearlong design exercise to rethink undergraduate education, students suggested doing away with the major and replacing it with a "mission".
    The goal of the exercise was to " help students select a meaningful course of study while in school, and then scaffold (给......搭脚手架) a clear arc for the first 10-15 years of their professional lives. "
    For many students, a major is just a box to check on an application anyway. By the end of their first year, 1 in 4 freshmen change their minds about their field of study anyway. Another half of first-year students say they plan to change majors.
    Students have plenty of options to choose from, of course. As a marketing strategy, colleges in recent years have come up with crazy new majors to entice (诱使) students to enroll, from sports management to web design. Since 2000, there has been a 20% increase in the number of majors at American colleges and universities, according to an analysis of the U. S. Education Department data. A third of those new programs were in just two fields: health professions and military technologies/ applied sciences. The 1990s saw similar growth in the number of majors. Indeed, nearly 4 in 10 majors on today’s government list didn’t exist in 1990.
    It’s time to kill the major or at the very least reduce the emphasis on it during the college application process and the first year of school.
According to the passage, college majors exist in college nowadays mainly because________.
选项 A、faculty wants to establish departments for their subjects
B、students need a structured curriculum to follow
C、students need to get the classes they need to take
D、colleges need to meet the requirements of the authority
答案A
解析 事实细节题。定位句指出，大学专业存在的意义在于其组织功能，高校的教务部门基于学科建设设置院系，从而便于管理。由此可见，专业存在的意义主要在于教务部门为其学科建设设置院系，故答案为A)。B)“学生需要规整的课程设置”，第三段第一句中有所提及，但这并非当前专业存在的意义，同时注意前面有Sure一词表达让步之意，故排除；C)“学生需要修其选定的课程”，文中没有信息说明其为当前专业存在的意义，故排除；D)“高校需要满足当局的需要”，requirements一词在第三段出现过，但此选项的内容无法在文中找到，故排除。
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