You cannot place a value on education. Knowledge is the food of the soul, Plato supposedly remarked. Great literature "irrigates

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问题     You cannot place a value on education. Knowledge is the food of the soul, Plato supposedly remarked. Great literature "irrigates the deserts" of our lives, as C. S. Lewis put it. But a college education comes with a price tag—up to $60,000 a year for a four-year residential degree at an American university.
    A report by Pay Scale, a research firm, tries to measure the returns on higher education in America. They vary enormously. A graduate in computer science from Stanford can expect to make $1. 7m more over 20 years than someone who never went to college, after the cost of that education is taken into account. A degree in humanities and English at Florida International University leaves you $132,000 worse off. Arts degrees at 12% of the colleges in the study offered negative returns; 30% offered worse financial rewards than putting the cash in 20-year Treasury bills.
    None of this matters if you are rich and studying fine art to enhance your appreciation of the family Rembrandts. But most 18-year-olds in America go to college to get a good job. That is why the country’s students have racked up $1.1 trillion of debt—more than America’s credit-card debts. For most students, college is still a wise investment, but for many it is not. Some 15% of student debtors fail to pay within three years; a startling 115,000 graduates work as caretakers.
    If the job market picks up, this dismal picture will improve. But there is another obvious way to increase the returns on a college education; make it cheaper. The price of college has risen more than four times faster than inflation since 1978, easily outpacing doctors’ bills. Much of this cash has been wasted on things that have nothing to do with education—luxurious dormitories, bright stadiums and armies of administrators. In 1976 there were only half as many college bureaucrats as academic staff; now the ratio is one to one.
    By the universities’ own measures, this has produced splendid results. Students are more than twice as likely to receive "A" grades now than in 1960. When outsiders do the grading, however, they are less impressed: one study found that 36% of students " did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning" over four years of college.
The phrase "picks up" (Line 1, Para. 4) most probably means________.

选项 A、bounces back after a recession
B、learns something without effort
C、takes something from the ground
D、makes the acquaintance of someone

答案A

解析 词义题。第四段第一句为“If the. job market picks up,this dismal picture will improve. ”由后半句的improve可知,就业市场在朝着一个好的方向发展,故该题只需把四个选项一一代入比对便可以知道答案。四个选项给出的都是pick up的不同意思,从字面意思解释都是对的,但是与原文相符的只有A项bounces back after a recession“在经济衰退后反弹”,即“好转”的意思。
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