Unit 3 Under the sea Learning about language课时作业

第一节 阅读理解

Predictions about higher education's future often result in two very different visions about what is next for colleges and universities. In one camp: those who paint a rosy picture of an economy that will continue to demand higher levels of education for an increasing share of the workforce. In the other: those who believe fewer people will enroll（入学）in college as tuition costs go out of control and alternatives to the traditional degree emerge.

"We are living in an age for learning, when there's so much knowledge available, that one would think that this is good news for higher education," Bryan Alexander told me recently. Alexander writes often about the future of higher education and is finishing a book on the subject for Johns Hopkins University Press. "Yet we've seen enrollment in higher education drop for six years."

Alexander believes that for some colleges and universities to survive, they need to shift from their historical mission of serving one type of student (usually a teenager fresh out of high school) for a specific period of time. "We're going to see many different ways through higher education in the future," Alexander said, "from closer ties between secondary and postsecondary（中学后）schools to new options for adults. The question is, which institutions adopt new models and which try desperately to hang on to what they have."

"The fact is that to maintain affordability, accessibility and excellence, something needs to change," Rafael Bras, Georgia Tech's provost (院长), told me when he unveiled the report at the Milken Institute Global Conference this past spring.

The commission's report includes many impressive ideas, but three point to the possibility of a very different future for colleges and universities.

1) College for life, rather than just four years. The primary recommendation of the Georgia Tech report is that the university turns itself into a place for lifelong learning that allows students to "associate rather than enroll."

"Students who we educate now are expected to have a dozen occupations," Bras said. "So a system that receives students once in their lives and turns them out with the Good Housekeeping seal(印章) of approval to become alums (校友) and come back on occasion and give money is not the right model for the future."