A proposal for a new university in Canada recently caught my eye for a host

游客2023-08-21  14

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    For most college students, the idea of a major is outdated in a 21st Century economy in a constant state of flux.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. [br] Which of the following is true about the college major according to the passage?

选项 A、A major is just a box full of application tables.
B、1 in 4 first-year students say they plan to change majors.
C、Colleges establish new majors to attract students nowadays.
D、Nearly 2 in 5 majors on the government list didn’t exist until 1990.

答案 C

解析 推理判断题。定位句指出,作为一种营销手段,近年来各大学开设了很多令人难以置信的专业来吸引学生报考,从体育管理专业到网页设计专业,故答案为C)。A)“专业就是装满了申请表格的盒子”,文章倒数第三段第一句提到,对于很多学生来说,专业就是申请表上的一个选择框,选项曲解了文意,故排除;B)“四分之一的大学新生说他们计划换专业”,倒数第三段第二、三句提到,一年之后,有四分之一的大一新生都会对他们所学的领域另有想法,而另有一半的新生则打算换专业,本选项是张冠李戴,故排除;D)“政府清单上有近五分之二的专业到1990年后才出现”,倒数第二段最后一句提到,如今的政府清单上有将近五分之二的专业在1990年时是不存在的,选项内容与文意相悖,故排除。
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