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  3. In the past, American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose — to advance learning and to offer a chance

In the past, American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose — to advance learning and to offer a chance

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问题     In the past, American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose — to advance learning and to offer a chance to become familiar with bodies of knowledge already discovered to those who wished it. To create and to impart, these were the hallmarks of American higher education prior to the most recent, tumultuous decades of the twentieth century. The successful institution of higher learning had never been one whose mission could be defined in terms of providing vocational skills or as a strategy for resolving societal problems. In a subtle way Americans believed postsecondary education to be useful, but not necessarily of immediate use.
    Another purpose has now been assigned to the mission of American colleges and universities. Institutions of higher learning — public or private — commonly face the challenge of defining their programs in such a way as to contribute to the service of the community.
    This service role has various applications. Most common are programs to meet the demands of regional employment markets, to provide opportunities for upward social and economic mobility, to achieve racial, ethnic, or social integration, or more generally to produce "productive" as compared to "educated" graduates. Regardless of its precise definition, the idea of a service-university has won acceptance within the academic community.
    One need only be reminded of the change in language describing the two-year college to appreciate the new value currently being attached to the concept of a service-related university. The traditional two-year college has shed its pejorative "junior" college label and is generally called a "community" college, a clearly value-laden expression representing the latest commitment in higher education. Even the doctoral degree, long recognized as a required "union card" in the academic world, has come under severe criticism as the pursuit of learning for its own sake and the accumulation of knowledge without immediate application to a professor’s classroom duties. The idea of a college or university that performs a triple function — communicating knowledge to students, expanding the content of various disciplines, and interacting in a direct relationship with society — has been the most important change in higher education in recent years.
    The novel development, however, is often overlooked. Educators have always been familiar with those parts of the two-year college curriculum that have a "service" or vocational orientation. It is important to know this. But some commentaries on American postsecondary education tend to underplay the impact of the attempt of colleges and universities to relate to, if not resolve, the problems of society. What’s worse, they obscure a fundamental question posed by the service-university— what is higher education supposed to do?
The opening paragraph is written in order to state________.
选项 A、the future usefulness of the knowledge obtained in college
B、the missions of different educational institutions in America
C、the purpose of American postsecondary education in the past
D、the history of the development of American higher education
答案C
解析 归纳总结题。第一段的大意是美国的大学在过去的目的是为了服务于双重目的——促进学习，加强传播。最后一句话讲到，美国人微妙地认为高等教育是有用的，但不一定要立即使用。因此，第一段的写作目的是阐述美国大学过去的使命。
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