单选题 Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students, who typically have the strongest SAT scores and high school science preparation, are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors.
For educators, the big question is how to keep the momentum being built in the lower grades from dissipating once the students get to college. "We"re losing an alarming proportion of our nation"s science talent once the students get to college," says Mitchell J. Chang, an education professor at U.C.L.A. who has studied the matter. "It"s not just a K-12 preparation issue." Professor Chang says that rather than losing mainly students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with poor records, the attrition rate can be higher at the most selective schools, where he believes the competition overwhelms even well-qualified students.
The bulk of attrition comes in engineering and among pre-med majors, who typically leave STEM fields (fields of science, technology, engineering and math) if their hopes for medical school fade. There is no doubt that the main majors are difficult and growing more complex. Some students still lack math preparation or aren"t willing to work hard enough. Other barriers are the tough freshman classes, typically followed by two years of fairly abstract courses leading to a senior research or design project. In September, the Association of American Universities, which represents 61 of the largest research institutions, announced a five-year initiative to encourage faculty members in the STEM fields to use more interactive teaching techniques.
The latest research also suggests that there could be more subtle problems at work, like the proliferation of grade inflation in the humanities and social sciences, which provides another incentive for students to leave STEM majors. It is no surprise that grades are lower in math and science, where the answers are clear-cut and there are no bonus points for talented answers. Professors also say they are strict because science and engineering courses build on one another, and a student who fails to absorb the key lessons in one class will have to struggle in the next.
No one doubts that students need a strong theoretical foundation. But what frustrates education experts is how long it has taken for most schools to make changes. Notre Dame"s engineering dean, Peter Kilpatrick, will be the first to concede that sophomore and junior years, which focus mainly on theory, remain a "weak link" in technical education. He says his engineering school has gradually improved its retention rate over the past decade by creating design projects for freshmen and breaking "a deadly lecture" for 400 students into groups of 80. Only 50 to 55 percent of the school"s students stayed through graduation 10 years ago. But that figure now tops 75 percent, and efforts to create more labs in the middle years could help raise it further.

单选题 It is important for educators to ______

单选题 The word "attrition" probably refers to ______

单选题 Medical students are more likely to change their majors because ______

单选题 Which of the following is not mentioned as a cause for the shift in major?

单选题 To correct the situation, the author would be likely to advocate ______