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  3. You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad? Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks. The American Enterp

You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad? Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks. The American Enterp

admin2015-01-03  60
问题     You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad? Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks. The American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Perry has put together a detailed chart showing the notorious, 812 percent rise in the cost of course materials since 1978, as captured in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index data. The price of all those Introduction to Sociology and Calculus books have shot up faster than health-care, home prices, and, of course, inflation.
    Academic publishers will tell you that creating modern textbooks is an expensive, labor-intensive process that demands charging high prices. But as Kevin Carey noted in a recent article, the industry also shares some of the dysfunctions that help drive up the cost of healthcare spending. Just as doctors prescribe prescription drugs they will never have to pay for, college professors often assign titles with little consideration of cost. Students, like patients worried about their health, don’t have much choice to pay up, lest they risk their grades. Meanwhile, Carey illustrates how publishers have done just about everything within their power to step up their profits, from bundling textbooks with software that forces students to buy new editions instead of cheaper used copies, to suing a low-cost textbook start-ups over ill-conceived and inadequate copyright claims.
    And that has consequences for students. According to the National Association of College Stores(NACS), the average college student reports paying about $655 for textbooks and supplies annually, down a bit from $702 four years ago. The NACS credits that fall to its efforts to promote used books along with programs that let students rent rather than buy their texts. But to put that $655 in perspective, consider this: after aid, the average college student spends about $2,900 on their annual tuition, according to the College Board. We’re not talking about just another drop in the bucket here.
    AEI’s Perry writes that he’s confident open educational resources, made available via the web, will eventually make traditional textbooks obsolete, just as Wikipedia killed off the encyclopedia. The difference is that nobody I know ever had a college professor who said, "If you don’t read the encyclopedia, you’ll likely fail this class." If we ever want to bring the cost of these books under control, the faculty need to become responsive to the problem.
This passage is focused on______.
选项 A、whether college students should buy textbooks
B、why college textbooks are so absurdly expensive
C、what textbooks are more profitable for publishers
D、which textbooks are economical for students
答案B
解析 文章的主题不是学生是否应该购买课本，也不是讲哪些课本能省钱。虽然文章第二段指出教材出版商为谋取更高利润不择手段，但也只是简要介绍。文章的中心内容是解释为什么课本价格高得离奇，同时作者也发泄了自己的不满。
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