单选题
You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad?
Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks. The American Enterprise
Institute's Mark Perry has put together a detailed chart showing the notorious,
812 percent rise in the cost of course materials since 1978, as captured in the
Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price index data. The price of all those
Introduction to Sociology and Calculus books have shot up faster than
health-care, home prices, and, of course, inflation. Academic
publishers will tell you that creating modern textbooks is an expensive,
labor-intensive process that demands charging high prices. But as Kevin Carey
noted in a recent article, the industry also shares some of the dysfunctions
that help drive up the cost of healthcare spending. Just as doctors prescribe
prescription drugs they will never have to pay for, college professors often
assign titles with little consideration of cost. Students, like patients worried
about their health, don't have much choice to pay up, lest they risk their
grades. Meanwhile, Carey illustrates how publishers have done just about
everything within their power to step up their profits, from bundling textbooks
with software that forces students to buy new editions instead of cheaper used
copies, to suing a low-cost textbook start-ups over ill-conceived and inadequate
copyright claims. And that has consequences for students.
According to the National Association of College Stores (NACS), the average
college student reports paying about $655 for textbooks and supplies annually,
down a bit from $702 four years ago. The NACS credits that fall to its efforts
to promote used books along with programs that let students rent rather than buy
their texts. But to put that $655 in perspective, consider this: after aid, the
average college student spends about $2,900 on their annual tuition, according
to the College Board. We're not talking about just another drop in the bucket
here. AEI's Perry writes that he's confident open educational
resources, made available via the web, will eventually make traditional
textbooks obsolete, just as Wikipedia killed off the encyclopedia. The
difference is that nobody I know ever had a college professor who said, "If you
don't read the encyclopedia, you'll likely fail this class." If we ever want to
bring the cost of these books under control, the faculty need to become
responsive to the problem.
单选题
The first paragraph is mainly concerned with ______.
单选题
Academic publishers try to yield higher profits by the following means
EXCEPT ______.
A. having students buy new editions
B. publishing a textbook series
C. discouraging the use of used textbooks
D. bullying small new publishers of textbooks
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】第二段列举了教材出版公司为了提高利润而采取的种种“阴招”，但不包括出版“系列书”。
单选题
Which of the following statements is true according Paragraph three?
A. College students have to pay more for textbooks than four years
ago.
B. The NACS hardly encourages students to use used books or rent
texts.
C. The annual tuition of college students has been declining slowly.
D. $655 for textbooks is a big sum compared to the annual tuition.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】第三段第二句说明课文的费用比四年前略低，相差近50美元。第三句讲这是由于美国大学商店协会鼓励学生使用旧课本。学生一年的学费是2900美元，而购买教材额外需要655美元，相比之下不是个小数字。本段最后一句使用现在进行时，强调作者的意图。成语a drop in the bucket的含义是a very small or unimportant amount(微不足道)。所以，这句话意味着655美元不是小数目。
单选题
Open educational resources are expected to ______.