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  3. Three years ago Elon College, a school of more than 4,000 students with a rising academic reputation, decided it was no longer g

Three years ago Elon College, a school of more than 4,000 students with a rising academic reputation, decided it was no longer g

admin2015-09-26  25
问题     Three years ago Elon College, a school of more than 4,000 students with a rising academic reputation, decided it was no longer good marketing to be known as Fighting Christians and changed its mascot to the Phoenix, emblematic of its rebirth after a major fire in the 1920s.
    Some alumni resisted, but the change produced nothing like the soul-searching the school went through when, five months later, it joined a major movement in U.S. higher e-ducation by dropping the word "college" and renaming itself Elon University.
    In the past 10 years, according to Higher Education Publications Inc. in Arlington, 161 other US colleges have done the same thing, for reasons that often have as much to do with image as academics. To make the situation more confusing, many of the new universities still advertise their collegelike atmosphere, while some institutions that call themselves colleges still tell potential applicants that they are just like universities.
    Guess which image is more appealing to 21st-century teenagers and their tuition-paying parents? George Dehne & Associates, a consulting firm, found that two-thirds of prospective students said they planned to enroll in a public or private university, not college. Dehne found that universities were more highly regarded than colleges by employers and graduate schools and more likely to be credited with having better students, a better social life, greater diversity of students, greater prestige and stronger science programs.
    The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Menlo Park, Calif. , classifies institutions based on the number and range of their academic program. "But the use of college, university or anything else in the name has nothing to do with it," said Alexander C. McCormick, senior scholar at the foundation. A few states regulate name changes of even private schools. In Oregon, a school that calls itself a university without authorization can be charged with "unlawful trade practices".
    But in most cases, colleges can rename themselves if they choose, and very few of the bigger ones have resisted the temptation. Among the 228 universities ranked by U. S. News & World Report in its "America’s Best Colleges" guide, only three of them—Boston College(12,375 students), the College of William and Mary(7, 500 students)and Dartmouth College(5, 000 students)—insist on keeping the more intimate title.
    The colleges that have made the switch call the renaming a reasoned response to the demands of students, faculty and modern preferences. Longwood College in Farmville, Va. , for instance, became a university in July because of the growth of its graduate programs and its effort to attain Division I athletic status among other factors.
    Leo Lambert, the President of Elon University, said his school’s name change has worked out fine. He’s not sure there’s any connection, but applications have increased 30 percent since the switch, and campus visits are up 67 percent.
    Lambert says he’s also seen signs of the power of the word "university". For instance, when he and his daughter Callie were visiting colleges last summer, they attended an information session at William and Mary. Although William and Mary officials said much about the virtues of intimacy, Lambert recalled, they also "took pains to make the point that they were really a university—law school, graduate programs, etc.—that chose to call itself a college. "
What is the passage mainly concerned with?
选项 A、America’s best colleges.
B、The power of the word "university".
C、Elon College renames itself.
D、Colleges upgrade their image by changing their names.
答案D
解析 主旨题。本文主要讨论了美国一些学院为了提高自己的竞争力，纷纷改“某学院”为“某大学”，从第二、三段伊隆学院的更名也可以证明这一点，所以[D]为正确答案。
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