单选题Directions: Read the following text. Answer
the questions on each text by choosing A, B, C or D. In the 1990s, everyone believed that education was the key
to economic success. A college degree, even a postgraduate degree, was essential
for anyone who wanted a good job as one of those "symbolic analysts".
But computers, are proficient at analyzing symbols; it is the messiness
of the real world that they have trouble with. Therefore, many of the jobs that
once required a college degree have been eliminated. The others can be done by
any intelligent person, whether or not he has studied world
literature. This trend should have been obvious in 1996. Even
then, America's richest man was Bill Gates, a college drop-out who did not need
a lot of formal education to build the world's most powerful information
technology company. Or consider the panic over "downsizing"
that gripped America in 1996. As economists quickly pointed out, the rate at
which Americans were losing jobs in the 90s was not especially high by
historical standards. Downsizing suddenly became news because, for the first
time, white-collar, college-educated workers were being fired in large numbers,
even while skilled mechanists and other blue-collar workers were in demand. This
should have signaled that the days of ever-rising wage premiums for people with
higher education were over. Eventually, the eroding
payoff(工资的发放) of higher education created a crisis in education itself. Why
should a student put himself through four years of college and several years of
postgraduate work to acquire credentials(资格；证书) with little monetary value?
These days, jobs that require only 6 or 12 months of vocational
training—paranursing(特别护理), carpentry, household maintenance and so on—pay
nearly as much if not more than a job that requires a master's degree, and pay
more than one requiring a PhD. So enrollment in colleges and
universities has dropped almost two-thirds since its peak at the turn of the
century. Today a place like Harvard is, as it was in the 19th century, more of a
social institution than a scholarly one—a place for children of the wealthy to
refine their social graces and befriend others of their class.
单选题
What is the author's opinion of higher education in future?
A. It will be the key to economic success.
B. It will become something like professional training.
C. The devaluation of higher education will be the trend.
D. The focus of higher education will move to computer science.