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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  52
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    For most college students, the idea of a major is outdated in a 21st Century economy in a constant state of flux.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 author, college majors can be replaced by________.
选项 A、technology, entrepreneurship/management, health professions, and creative industries
B、distinguishing students through practical and demonstrable skills
C、a whole set of courses at almost any college that would engage students
D、a yearlong design exercise to rethink undergraduate education
答案D
解析 推理判断题。第五段提到，对于大学新生，将不再问其专业，而问：“你想搞定什么问题?”第六段随之提出斯坦福大学将这种方法称作“目的学习”，接着文中提到，这种“目的学习”是为期一年的反思本科教育的课程设计训练的有机组成部分，学生们提议去除专业分类，并以某项“任务”取而代之，由此可以判断答案为D)。A)“技术、创业或企业管理、医疗卫生和创意产业”，第一段提到，加拿大某校学生将不再划分专业，取而代之的是，学生们可以通过在技术、创业或企业管理、医疗卫生和创意产业四个主要方向习得实用且易于展示的技能来凸显自己，因此，取代专业的是技能而非选项中提到的四个方向，该选项是对原文内容的曲解，故排除；B)“通过实用且易于展示的技能凸显学生”，本选项和A)一样是对原文内容的曲解，故排除；C)“几乎所有招收这些学生的高校都设置了一整套的课程体系”，第四段第三句提到该内容，但接下来又提到，这些课程并不能整齐划一地置于某个专业之下，由此可见，这些课程和专业不是处于同一层级，自然不能相互替代，故排除。
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