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  3. Or Maybe Major in Comp Lit? Let’s not exaggerate: science and engineering are not the new Comp Lit or philosophy, those unde

Or Maybe Major in Comp Lit? Let’s not exaggerate: science and engineering are not the new Comp Lit or philosophy, those unde

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问题                     Or Maybe Major in Comp Lit?
    Let’s not exaggerate: science and engineering are not the new Comp Lit or philosophy, those under graduate majors for which employment prospects are so uncertain your parents practically beg you to go to a trade school instead. But about those claims that the nation suffers from a shortage of scientists and engineers—claims such as the National Science Foundation’s warning in 2004 of "an emerging and critical problem of the science and engineering labor force"— Vivek Wadhwa, founder of Relativity Technologies and executive in residence at Duke University, has a brief response-. "It’s a lie."
    So why do people keep telling you there’s such a shortage of scientists and engineers that you’ll have your pick of jobs? Partly because even a tiny shortfall in S&E leads policymakers and corporate giants to issue warnings of a kind no one does when the nation is short in, say, marketers. "Science and engineering are perceived as so crucial to our economic engine and national security, it’s easy to get people panicked over the possibility of a shortage," says demographer Michael Teitelbaum of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. But those who do not have a financial stake in getting more students to choose S&E are catching on. Science magazine recently noted " the striking discrepancy between the overfull market for early-career scientists and the numerous prestigious reports [about]... a looming shortage."
    So, first the good news for students drawn to S&E. The overall unemployment rate for scientists and engineers in the United States was a mere 2. 5 percent in 2006—the lowest since the early 1990s. Overall unemployment was 4. 7 percent.
    Now the bad news. Demand for scientists and, especially, engineers rises and falls more sharply and unpredictably than in any other sector. Unemployment was 2. 6 percent in 1993—and 50 percent higher in 2003 before it fell again. Even that undercounts the jobless: you’re not included if you gave up on finding a job in, say, electrical engineering and instead became a real estate agent. S&E jobs rise and fall for the same reasons they do in other sectors, including overall economic conditions, but also booms and busts in military spending, NASA projects and the budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy. A 2008 report by the RAND Corporation, requested by the office of the Secretary of Defense, concluded that " there is no evidence of a current shortage of S & E workers. " To their credit, students seem to have gotten wise to the mismatch between rhetoric and reality: bachelor’s degrees in S&E have been hovering at about 32 percent of undergrad degrees, compared with 35 percent in the1960s, as many students smart enough to master Hamiltonians or the Hardy-Weinberg Law realize they can put their brainpower to more profitable ends on, say, Wall Street.
The passage is mainly to______.
选项 A、compare different majors’ popularity
B、demonstrate the change in students’ major choices
C、analyze the social demand for S&E majors
D、predict S&E majors’ employment prospect
答案C
解析 本题考查文章主旨。文章前两段探讨理工科人才需求的问题，得出客观的结论：市场上理工科人才并不短缺。在第三、四段，作者从对理工科专业感兴趣的学生的角度出发，帮助他们分析该专业就业前景的利弊(the good news for students drawn to S&E; the bad news．．．)。并在最后，对于那些认清形势并理智转向其他专业的学生予以肯定和支持(to their credit…．have gotten wise to the mismatck…)。可见作者写这篇文章盼主要目的是帮助学生认清社会对理工科的真正需求程度。[C]正确。不同专业的比较是作者在论证主题的过程中提到的事实，但仅在第一段中有所涉及，排除[A]。学生对专业选择的变化只在末段有所提及，且是用于说明市场上并不缺少理工科的学生，排除[B]。第四段第二句提到理工科的人才需求特点是涨落幅度大且难以预料(rises and falls more sharply and unpredictably)，因此[D]选项“预测理工科学生的就业前景”的说法显然不正确。
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