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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.
"Those who do not have a financial slake" (line 13, para. 2) probably refers to______.
选项 A、policymakers
B、employers
C、practical parents
D、objective observers
答案D
解析 本题考查词义句意。解此题需把文中所涉及的各方进行归类。文章第一、二段提到，现实的家长过分低估理工专业的就业前景而竭力劝说孩子们选择其他专业；而专业政策制定者和大企业却在竭力鼓吹人才缺乏，因为科学和工程学对于经济引擎和国家安全至关重要，可见家长、政策制定者、用人单位因为是利益相关方而看法有失偏颇。接下来第二段倒数第二句用But转折，提到另外一类人的看法：“无经济利害关系的人们”正逐渐意识到(理工专业真实的需求状况)。接着以《科学》杂志为例指出了这种客观的看法：权威报道中的情况和现实情况存在巨大差异。[D]正确。
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