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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 comparison of the current rate of S & E majors to that of 1960s is made to show______.
选项 A、the influence of public claims on S&E shortage
B、the diversity of factors influencing S&E demands
C、the current money-oriented career plans
D、students’ adaptation to the reality
答案D
解析 本题考查写作目的。题干中的比较出现在最后一段的末句。该句提到相比较20世纪60年代的35％，理工科学士学位已大约占学士学位总数的32％左右。比例由35％到32％，显然是下降而非上升；而理工科人才短缺宣称的影响应是理工科学生比例的增加，故排除[A]选项。结合语境，两者的比较出现在一句评论之后：所幸的是学生们似乎已经对宣传和现实的不匹配变聪明了(…gotten wise to the mismatch between rhetoric and reality)，也就是说这一对数字的比较正体现了学生克服宣传的影响、认清现实进而做出了相应的调整。[D]正确。文章最后提到那些非常聪明的人转向易于赚钱的专业，是为了进一步说明学生为适应现实而采取的做法，与理工科学生比例的降低没有直接关系，[C]错误。[B]是利用文中事实做干扰。第四段第五句确实指出了影响理工科需求的因素有多种，但和理工科学生比例的变化无关。
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