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Despite a cooling of the economy, high technology companies are still crying

游客2025-03-19  10
问题     Despite a cooling of the economy, high technology companies are still crying out for skilled workers. The Information Technology Association of America projects that more than 800 000 technology jobs will go unfilled next year. The lack of qualified workers poses a huge threat to the U. S. economy.
    The most commonly cited reason for this state of affairs is that the country’s agrarian-age education system, separated from the needs of the business world, fails to prepare students in the primary and secondary grades for twenty-first-century work. Yet an inadequate and outmoded education system is only part of the problem. A less tangible but equally powerful cause is an antique classification system that divides the workforce into two camps: white-collar knowledge workers and blue-collar manual laborers.
    Blue-collar workers emerged in the United States during the Industrial Age as work migrated from farms to factories. White-collar office workers became a significant class in the twentieth century, outnumbering their blue-collar brethren by mid-century. But the white or blue paradigm has clearly outlived its utility. Corporations increasingly require a new layer of knowledge workers a highly skilled multi-disciplinarian who combines the mind of the white-collar worker with the hands of the blue-collar employee. Armed with a solid grounding in mathematics and science (physics, chemistry and biology), these "gold-collar" workers—so named for their contributions to their companies and to the economy, as well as for their personal earning ability—apply that knowledge to technology. Of course, the gold-collar worker already exists in a wide range of jobs across a wide range of businesses; think of the maintenance technician who tests and repairs aircraft systems at American Airlines: the network administrator who manages systems and network operations at P&G: the advanced-manufacturing technician at Intel.
    But until American business recognizes these people as a new class of worker, one whose collar is neither blue nor white, demands that schools do a better job of preparing employees for the twenty-first-century workforce will be futile. Certainly, polytechnic high schools, colleges, and universities have made heroic efforts to teach workers new skills. But because many people see these initiatives as primarily training blue-collar workers, adequate funds are not invested in such programs, leaving them short of state-of-the-art tools and experienced teachers. And because gold-collar workers need to constantly update their skills to stay current with emerging technology, learning must be a continuous process, one that is funded by companies as well as by taxpayers. [br] It can be inferred that the gold-collar workers differ from white-collar and blue-collar workers in that they______.
选项 A、wear gold-collar working clothes when they are on duty
B、do better in combining their contributions and earning abilities
C、grasp the knowledge and engage in labor work as well
D、apply the arts knowledge to technology
答案 C
解析 文章第三段都在论述金领工人与白领工人和蓝领工人的区别。A的内容并未提及。根据B中的关键词contributions和earning abilities，可在第三段中间找到相关信息：这些金领工人是以对公司和经济所做的贡献和他们个人的工资收入能力，被冠以“金领”工人的名号，而不是说他们更擅长于把贡献和收入更好地结合起来，所以B不对。根据本段第四句话和第五句话：金领工人结合了白领的头脑和蓝领的手艺，把坚实的数理知识应用于技术中，可以推断出金领工人就是既懂得知识，又能用知识劳动的人，正是C答案的内容。D答案错在原文讲到金领工人是应用mathematics and science，而不是arts。
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