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  3. Experienced observers on American campuses have begun to notice a new group of mothers and fathers emerging over the past two ye

Experienced observers on American campuses have begun to notice a new group of mothers and fathers emerging over the past two ye

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问题      Experienced observers on American campuses have begun to notice a new group of mothers and fathers emerging over the past two years. Informally they are being called "helicopter parents" because of the way they hover over their offspring well beyond the standard moment to say goodbye.
     Clearly, with parents like these hovering close at hand, colleges and universities should consider themselves warned that life both on and off campus is not what is used to be.
      Why are these issues even being raised this fall? It is because parents have officially stepped forward as higher education’s newest constituency. Effective parent-orientation programs increasingly complex and comprehensive—are the first and most public steps in acknowledging the importance of their interests. In fact, mothers and fathers are arriving on campus with more serious questions than ever before about the cost of higher education, and what their child’s school of choice is doing to earn their dollars.
     Among high-profile institutions nationally, few have taken as dramatic steps as has Northeast University in Boston. Over the past five years, to enhance its image, Northeastern University has gone against the grain and boldly recast itself, focusing on national prominence over bulk.
     In the mid-1980s, it registered over 30, 000 full and part-time undergraduates; last year, the university enrolled a more selectively chosen 18, 000 undergraduates. Along the way, however, many parents have had many questions about life on and off this prominent urban campus.
      Actually aware of this, and of its growing responsibilities to its neighbors and the external community, Northeastern has strategically enhanced its parent-orientated programs as a way to build friends and refine its new image.
     According to Caro Mercado, director of the Office of Parent Programs and Services, Northeastern jointly focused its orientations for parents and students on the importance of being "good citizens and good neighbors" simultaneously. With orientation sessions that feature videotapes of campus neighbors talking about the school, with a much more deliberate system of alerting parents to the major events coming to the city over the course of the year, and with an official Parents Association that publishes its own newsletter and handbook, Northeastern tangibly makes the kinds of extra effort that parents have come to believe that it should be included in the cost of their family’s higher education①.
     And yet as competing colleges and universities in every sector of the country now furiously launch new parents’ pages on their websites and publish their first parent newsletters, a new tension had emerged on those same campuses: Whose first-year experience is it, anyway?
     The most enlightened universities recognize the need to establish a relationship with each student that respects privacy, encourages independence, and facilities the transition to adulthood. Although it may not be immediately apparent, the expectation that these skills will be delivered is precisely what parents have purchased in their child’s choice of an undergraduate degree program. Blindly continuing the same patterns of involvement that worked when their child was in high school is not the answer②.
What is the passage mainly talking about?
选项 A、The definition of "helicopter parents".
B、The content of parent-orientation programs.
C、The great progress that Northeastern University has made.
D、A shift in the university’s idea of schooling.
答案D
解析 主旨题。文章主要讲述的不是如何定义所谓的“直升飞机式”父母，也不是介绍父母定位计划包含的内容，更不是为了宣传东北大学近年所取得的成就(这只是结果的体现)，都不够全面。实际上文章讨论了所谓直升飞机父母出现的原因及其由来(第五段末句及第六段首句)，并以东北大学为例对父母定位计划这一新生事物进行了介绍(第七段)，选项A 、B 和C 学理念调整的表现及结果。正确答案为D ，学校顺势而为，调整办学思路，推出父母培训计划，提升学校知名度。
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