Directions: Reading the following text. Choose the best word or phrase for each numbered blank from the four choices marked A, B, C or D. 

A four-year college degree, seen for generations as a ticket to a better life, is【A1】______enough to guarantee a steadily rising paycheck. 

Just ask Bea Dewing. After she earned a bachelor’s degree—his second—in computer science from Maryland’s Frostburg State University in 1986, she enjoyed almost unbroken advance in【A2】______ eventually earning $89,000 a year as a data modeler for Sprint Corp in Lawrence, Ken. Then, in 2002, Sprint laid her off. 

“I thought I might be looking a few weeks or months at most,” says Ms. Dewing, now 56 years old.【A3】______she spent the next six years in a career wilderness, starting in internet cafe that didn’t succeed, working【A4】______job and low-end positions in data processing, and fruitlessly【A5】______hundreds of job postings. The low point came around 2004 when a recruiter for Sprint—now known as Sprint Nextel Corp.—called seeking to fill a job similar to the one she【A6】______two years earlier, but paying barely a third of her old salary. 

In April, Ms. Dewing finally landed a job【A7】______her old one in the information technology department of Wal-Mart Store Inc.’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark, where she relocated. She【A8】______about 20% less than she did in 2002, adjusted for inflation, but considers herself fortunate, and wiser. 

A degree, she says, “isn’t any big guarantee of employment, it’s a basic【A9】______, a step you have to take to【A10】______be considered for many professional jobs.” A college degree may not take you as far as you’d expect, although there may still be a few fields where a bachelor’s degree still remains a worthy investment.