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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  32
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.
Paragraph two focuses on______.
选项 A、the relationship between doctors and college professors
B、the reasons for the high spending on health care
C、the dysfunctions existing in the publishing industry
D、professors’ indifference to students’ difficulties
答案C
解析 本段确实提到了医生与教师的相似之处——有时不为自己服务的对象着想，但这种比较不是本段的中心内容。本段的开头就介绍说教材出版商找各种借口提高课本价格，其做法类似于医疗行业。作者接着揭露出版商的种种生财之道：把软件与课本捆绑，购买新的软件就必须购买新课本，他们甚至欺行霸市。这些都反映教材出版这个行业的不正常行为。
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