2011年6月英语六级试卷（文字版）_第3页

A college education is getting ever more expensive. Since 1982 tuitions have been rising at roughly twice the rate of inflation. In 2008 the net cost of attending a four-year public university – after financial aid– equaled 28% of median (中间的)family income, while a four-year private university cost 76% of median family income. More and more scholarships are based on merit, not need. Poorer students are not always the best-informed consumers. Often they wind up deeply in debt or simply unable to pay after a year or two and must drop out.

There once was a time when universities took pride in their dropout rates. Professors would begin the year by saying, "Look to the right and look to the left. One of you is not going to be here by the end of the year." But such a Darwinian spirit is beginning to give way as at least a few colleges face up to the graduation gap. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the gap has been roughly halved over the last three years. The university has poured resources into peer counseling to help students from inner-city schools adjust to the rigor (严格要求)and faster pace of a university classroom–and also to help minority students overcome the stereotype that they are less qualified. Wisconsin has a "laserlike focus" on building up student skills in the first three months, according to vice provost (教务长)Damon Williams.

State and federal governments could sharpen that focus everywhere by broadly publishing minority graduation rates. For years private colleges such as Princeton and MIT have had success bringing minorities onto campus in the summer before freshman year to give them some prepara­tory courses. The newer trend is to start recruiting poor and non-white students as early as the seventh grade, using innovative tools to identify kids with sophisticated verbal skills. Such pro­grams can be expensive, of course, but cheap compared with the millions already invested in scholarships and grants for kids who have little chance to graduate without special support.

With effort and money, the graduation gap can be closed. Washington and Lee is a small, selective school in Lexington, Va. Its student body is less than 5% black and less than 2% Latino. While the school usually graduated about 90% of its whites, the graduation rate of its blacks and Latinos had dipped to 63% by 2007. "We went through a dramatic shift," says Dawn Watkins, the vice president for student affairs. The school aggressively pushed mentoring (辅导) of minorities by other students and "partnering" with parents at a special pre-enrollment session. The school had its first-ever black homecoming. Last spring the school graduated the same proportion of minorities as it did whites. If the United States wants to keep up in the global economic race, it will have to pay systematic attention to graduating minorities, not just enrolling them.教育联展网

注意：此部分试题请在答题卡1上作答。

1.   What is the author's main concern about American higher education?

A)  The small proportion of minority students.

B)  The low graduation rates of minority students.

C)  The growing conflicts among ethnic groups.

D)  The poor academic performance of students.

2.   What was the pride of President Barry Mills of Bowdoin College?

A)The prestige of its liberal arts programs.

B)  Its ranking among universities in Maine.

C)  The high graduation rates of its students.

D)Its increased enrollment of minority students.

3.   What is the risk facing America?

A)Its schools will be overwhelmed by the growing number of illegal immigrants.

B)  The rising generation will be less well educated than the previous one.

C)  More poor and non-white students will be denied access to college.

D)It is going to lose its competitive edge in higher education.

4.   How many African-American students earned their degrees in California community colleges according to a recent review?

A)  Fifty-six percent.                                           C) Fifteen percent.

B)  Thirty-nine percent.                                       D) Sixty-seven percent.

5.   Harvard, Yale, and Princeton show almost no gap between black and white graduation rates mainly because   .

A)their students work harder                              C) their classes are generally smaller

B)  they recruit the best students                           D) they give students more attention