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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  55
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    For most college students, the idea of a major is outdated in a 21st Century economy in a constant state of flux.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.
What can be inferred from Paragraph 4?
选项 A、Teenagers know the problem that they want to deal with.
B、Courses in some colleges are not appropriate for students.
C、College students like to talk about what they want to repair.
D、A whole set of courses are arranged under the umbrella of majors.
答案A
解析 事实细节题。该段前两句指出，多数青少年不知道自己长大后想从事什么职业，但你还是会听闻很多准大学生们慷慨激昂地谈论着他们想要解决世界上的某些问题，这里要注意to be与to fix的区别，故答案为A)。B)“一些大学的课程不适合学生”，文中没有提到这一点，故排除；C)“大学生们喜欢谈论他们喜欢修理什么”，本选项是针对定位句中的fix一词的考查，fix有repair的意思，但在文中指的是“处理问题”，故排除；D)“一整套的课程都是根据专业设置的”，该段第三句提到，有些课程与专业不契合，无法设置在专业的框架之下，选项意思与之相悖，故排除。
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