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  3. You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad? Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks. The American Enterp

You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad? Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks. The American Enterp

admin2015-01-03  31
问题     You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad? Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks. The American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Perry has put together a detailed chart showing the notorious, 812 percent rise in the cost of course materials since 1978, as captured in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index data. The price of all those Introduction to Sociology and Calculus books have shot up faster than health-care, home prices, and, of course, inflation.
    Academic publishers will tell you that creating modern textbooks is an expensive, labor-intensive process that demands charging high prices. But as Kevin Carey noted in a recent article, the industry also shares some of the dysfunctions that help drive up the cost of healthcare spending. Just as doctors prescribe prescription drugs they will never have to pay for, college professors often assign titles with little consideration of cost. Students, like patients worried about their health, don’t have much choice to pay up, lest they risk their grades. Meanwhile, Carey illustrates how publishers have done just about everything within their power to step up their profits, from bundling textbooks with software that forces students to buy new editions instead of cheaper used copies, to suing a low-cost textbook start-ups over ill-conceived and inadequate copyright claims.
    And that has consequences for students. According to the National Association of College Stores(NACS), the average college student reports paying about $655 for textbooks and supplies annually, down a bit from $702 four years ago. The NACS credits that fall to its efforts to promote used books along with programs that let students rent rather than buy their texts. But to put that $655 in perspective, consider this: after aid, the average college student spends about $2,900 on their annual tuition, according to the College Board. We’re not talking about just another drop in the bucket here.
    AEI’s Perry writes that he’s confident open educational resources, made available via the web, will eventually make traditional textbooks obsolete, just as Wikipedia killed off the encyclopedia. The difference is that nobody I know ever had a college professor who said, "If you don’t read the encyclopedia, you’ll likely fail this class." If we ever want to bring the cost of these books under control, the faculty need to become responsive to the problem.
Which of the following statements is true according Paragraph three?
选项 A、College students have to pay more for textbooks than four years ago.
B、The NACS hardly encourages students to use used books or rent texts.
C、The annual tuition of college students has been declining slowly.
D、$655 for textbooks is a big sum compared to the annual tuition.
答案D
解析 第三段第二句说明课文的费用比四年前略低，相差近50美元。第三句讲这是由于美国大学商店协会鼓励学生使用旧课本。学生一年的学费是2 900美元，而购买教材额外需要655美元，相比之下不是个小数字。本段最后一句使用现在进行时，强调作者的意图。成语a drop in the bucket的含义是a very smallor unimportant amount(微不足道)。所以，这句话意味着655美元不是小数目。
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