A young woman goes to university and earns a degree in religious and women's studies. In the process she piles up some $ 100,000 in student-loan debt. Upon graduation, she cannot find a job in her field and struggles to pay her bills. An example of unwise decision-making perhaps, but is it also proof of a long-debated bubble in American higher education? It is for Glenn Reynolds, the productive blogger, law professor and author of a new book, "The New School". With tuition costs rising much faster than inflation, Americans are taking on record amounts of debt over $1 trillion by 2013—to fund their education. Many are finding that their job prospects do not justify the investment. Whereas a university degree once meant automatic entry into the middle class, it now comes with no such guarantee. But is higher education as bad a deal as Mr. Reynolds makes it out to be? "Some people are graduating with debts of $100,000 or more," he says, "sometimes much more." Most are not, though. The average graduate holds student-loan debt of $29,400, a number not found in this book. College Board, a non-profit organisation, finds that the median earnings of university graduates emerging from four-year courses and without a further degree, such as a master's, are 65% higher over their lifetimes than those of high-school graduates. Short on numbers, the book contributes little to the bubble debate. But Mr. Reynolds puts forward criticism of American universities that will ring true to anyone who has attended one recently. Universities can help people make money in three ways: by teaching them skills, giving them credentials that employers want and providing access to a valuable social network. Some studies have shown that university students fail to learn much of anything. Acquiring skills, of course, can be quite expensive. Prices should not continue going up forever, so new thinking is needed. The web provides one way forward, and although Mr. Reynolds is doubtful about the ability of colleges to reinvent themselves, some are catching on. Take the Georgia Institute of Technology, which has joined up with Udacity, an online educator, to offer a master's degree in computer science for $ 7,000. "It's a real, accredited degree," says Mr. Reynolds, "just like the ones that cost six times as much if earned on campus."

European farm ministers have ended three weeks of negotiations with a deal which they claim represents genuine reform of the common agricultural policy(CAP). Will it be enough to kickstart the Doha world trade negotiations? On the face of it, the deal agreed in the early hours of Thursday June 26th looks promising. Most subsidies linked to specific farm products are, at last, to be broken—the idea is to replace these with a direct payment to farmers, unconnected to particular products. Support prices for several key products, including milk and butter, are to be cut—that should mean European prices eventually falling towards the world market level. Cutting the link between subsidy and production was the main objective of proposals put forward by Mr. Fischler, which had formed the starting point for the negotiations. The CAP is hugely unpopular around the world, ft subsidises European farmers to such an extent that they can undercut farmers from poor countries, who also face trade barriers that largely exclude them from the potentially lucrative European market. Farm trade is also a key feature of the Doha round of trade talks, launched under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in November 2001. Developing countries have lined up alongside a number of industrial countries to demand an end to the massive subsidies Europe pays its farmers. Several Doha deadlines have already been missed because of the EU"s intransigence, and the survival of the talks will be at risk if no progress is made by September, when the world"s trade ministers meet in Cancun, Mexico. But now even the French seem to have gone along with the deal hammered out in Luxembourg. Up to a point, anyway. The package of measures gives the green light for the most eager reformers to move fast to implement the changes within their own countries. But there is an escape clause of sorts for the French and other reform-averse nations. They can delay implementation for up to two years. There is also a suggestion that the reforms might not apply where there is a chance that they would lead to a reduction in land under cultivation. These let-outs are potentially damaging for Europe"s negotiators in the Doha round. They could significantly reduce the cost savings that the reforms might otherwise generate and, in turn, keep European expenditure on farm support unacceptably high by world standards. More generally, the escape clauses could undermine the reforms by encouraging the suspicion that the new package will not deliver the changes that its supporters claim. Close analysis of what is inevitably a very complicated package might confirm the sceptics" fears.

【F1】 Much of the language used to describe monetary policy, such as steering the economy to a soft landing or a touch on the brakes, makes itself sound like a precise science. Nothing could be further from the truth. The link between interest rates and inflation is uncertain. And there are long, variable lags before policy changes have any effect on the economy.【F2】 Hence there is an analogy that likens the conduct of monetary policy to driving a car with a blackened windscreen, a cracked rearview mirror and a faulty steering wheel. Given all these disadvantages, central bankers seem to have had much to boast about of late. Average inflation in the big seven industrial economies fell to a mere 2.3% last year, close to its lowest level in 30 years, before rising slightly to 2.5% this July. This is a long way below the double-digit rates which many countries experienced in the 1970s and early 1980s. It is also less than most forecasters had predicted. In late 1994 the panel of economists which The Economist polls each month said that America"s inflation rate would average 3.5% in 1995. In fact, it fell to 2.6% in August, and is expected to average only about 3% for the year as a whole.【F3】 In Britain and Japan inflation is running half a percentage point below the rate predicted at the end of last year, this is no flash in the pan; over the past couple of years, inflation has been consistently lower than expected in Britain and America. 【F4】 Economists have been particularly surprised by favourable inflation figures in Britain and the linked States, since conventional measures suggest that both economies, and especially America"s, have little productive slack. America"s capacity utilisation, for example, hit historically high levels earlier this year, and its jobless rate(5.6% in August)has fallen below most estimates of the natural rate of unemployment—the rate below which inflation has taken off on the past. Why has inflation proved so mild? The most thrilling explanation is, unfortunately, a little defective.【F5】 Some economists argue that powerful structural changes in the world have upended the old economic models that were based upon the historical link between growth and inflation.

When you are small, all ambitions fall into one grand category: when I"m grown up. When I"m grown up, you say, I"ll go up in space. I"m going to be an author. I"ll kill them all and then they"ll be sorry. I"ll be married in a cathedral with sixteen bridesmaids in pink lace. I"ll have a puppy of my own and no one will be able to take him away. None of it ever happens, of course—or darn little, but the fantasies give you the idea that there is something to grow up for. Indeed one of the saddest things about gilded adolescence is the feeling that from eighteen on, it"s all downhill; I read with horror of an American hip pie wedding where someone said to the groom(aged twenty) "you seem so kind a grown up somehow", and the lad had to go round seeking assurance that he wasn"t. No, really he wasn"t. A determination to be better adults than the present incumbents is fine, but to refuse to grow up at all is just plain unrealism. When my children are grown up, I"ll learn to fly an airplane. I will career round the sky, knowing that if I do "go pop", there will be no little ones to suffer shock and maladjustment; that even if the worst does come to the worst, I will at least dodge the geriatric ward and all that look for your glasses in order to see where you"ve left your teeth. When my children are grown up, I"ll have fragile lovely things on low tables; I"ll have a white carpet; I"ll go to the pictures in the afternoons. When the children are grown up, I"ll actually be able to do a day"s work in a flay, instead of spreading over three, and go away for a weekend without planning as if for a trip to the Moon. When I"m grown up—I mean when they"re grown up—I"ll be free. Of course, I know it"s got to get worse before it gets better. Twelve-year-old, I"m told, don"t go to bed at seven, so you don"t even get your evening. Once they"re past ten you have to start worrying about their friends instead of simply shooting the intruders off the doorstep, and to settle down to a steady ten years of criticism of everything you"ve ever thought or done or won. Boys, it seems, may be less of a trial than girls, since they can"t get pregnant and they don"t borrow your clothes—if they do borrow your clothes, of course, you"ve got even more to worry about. The young don"t respect their parents any more. Goodness, how sad. Still, like eating snails, it might be all right once you"ve got over the idea; it might let us off having to bother quite so much with them when the time comes. But one is simply not going to be able to drone away one"s days, toothless by the fire, brooding on the past.

When it comes to suing doctors, Philadelphia is hardly the city of brotherly love. A combination of sprightly lawyers and sympathetic juries has made Philadelphia a hotspot for medical-malpractice lawsuits. Since 1995, Pennsylvania state courts have awarded an average of $2m in such cases, according to Jury Verdict Research, a survey firm. Some medical specialists have seen their malpractice insurance premiums nearly double over the past year. Obstetricians are now paying up to $104,000 a year to protect themselves. The insurance industry is largely to blame. Carol Golin, the Monitor"s editor, argues that in the 1990s insurers tried to grab market share by offering artificially low rates (betting that any losses would be covered by gains on their investments). The stock-market correction, coupled with the large legal awards, has eroded the insurers" reserves. Three in Pennsylvania alone have gone bust. A few doctors—particularly older ones—will quit. The rest are adapting. Some are abandoning litigation-prone procedures, such as delivering babies. Others are moving parts of their practice to neighboring states where insurance rates are lower. Some from Pennsylvania have opened offices in New Jersey. New doctors may also be deterred from setting up shop in litigation havens, however prestigious. Despite a Republican president, tort reform has got nowhere at the federal level. Indeed doctors could get clobbered indirectly by a Patients" Bill of Rights, which would further expose managed care companies to lawsuits. This prospect has fuelled interest among doctors in Pennsylvania"s new medical malpractice reform bill, which was signed into law on March 20th. It will, among other things, give doctors $40m of state funds to offset their insurance premiums, spread the payment of awards out over time and prohibit individuals from double dipping—that is, suing a doctor for damages that have already been paid by their health insurer. But will it really help? Randall Bovbjerg, a health policy expert at the Urban Institute, argues that the only proper way to slow down the litigation machine would be to limit the compensation for pain and suffering, so-called "non-monetary damages". Needless to say, a fixed cap on such awards is resisted by most trial lawyers. But Mr. Bovbjerg reckons a more nuanced approach, with a sliding scale of payments based on well-defined measures of injury, is a better way forward. In the meantime, doctors and insurers are bracing themselves for a couple more rough years before the insurance cycle turns. Nobody disputes that hospital staff make mistakes: a 1999 Institute of Medicine report claimed that errors kill at least 44,000 patients a year. But there is little evidence that malpractice lawsuits on their own will solve the problem.

BSection III Writing/B

How soon your performance will be rated may influence how well you do, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science. In the study, researchers Keri L. Kettle and Gerald Haubl from the University of Alberta set out to determine whether the timing of feedback influences performance. Because earlier feedback means a more proximate possibility of disappointment, the researchers hypothesized that students told they would be learning their grade sooner would be more likely to perform well, compared with those who wouldn"t find out their grade until later. Of 501 students taking a particular course, 271 agreed to participate in the study. All students were assigned a four minute oral presentation, which they had to deliver in front of about 10 classmates. Their performance was ranked on a scale of 1-10 by classmates, and the average of those scores made up their grade for the assignment Prior to giving their oral presentation, study participants were asked to predict how well they would do, and were also told how soon they would learn their grade. The researchers found that study participants who"d been told they would be given their scores earlier performed far better than those told they"d receive their scores later. What"s more, despite the fact that, on average, students who anticipated finding out how they"d done earlier significantly outperformed classmates who were given their scores later, they were more likely to predict low marks for themselves. In contrast, those who were told they wouldn"t learn their scores until later were more likely to predict very high marks—which they seldom actually went on to earn. As a control, the researchers also assessed the scores of the 230 students who had declined to participate in the study. While students with the earliest feedback scored in the 60th percentile on average, and those with the latest feedback scored in the 40th percentile on average, those not included in the study(and whose feedback time hadn"t been manipulated)consistently scored in the 50th percentile. The findings suggest that "mere anticipation of more rapid feedback improves performance," the authors conclude, and that, interestingly, proximity of feedback influences predicted performance and actual performance differently. As the authors sum up: "People do best precisely when their predictions about their own performance are least optimistic." The influence of feedback anticipation on performance has implications beyond the classroom as well, the researchers argue—in the way that managers respond to employee work, for example, or maybe even how Mom and Dad size up how clean that room is. The findings, Kettle and Haubl conclude, "have important practical implications for all individuals who are responsible for mentoring and for evaluating the performance of others."

Title: SCHOOL ACTIVITIESWord limit: 160-200 wordsTime limit: 40 minutesYou are required to develop your essay according to the given topic sentence of each paragraph.Outline:1. The school activities announcements on the campus.2. The first group takes part in these activities actively for various reasons.3. The second group spends their time differently.4. Your preference.

English speaking country

Can Wealth Bring Happiness?

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B

For the past several years, the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade has featured a column called "Ask Marilyn." People are invited to query Marilyn vos Savant, who at age 10 had tested at a mental level of someone about 23 years old; that gave her an IQ of 228—the highest score ever recorded. IQ tests ask you to complete verbal and visual analogies, to envision paper after it has been folded and cut, and to deduce numerical sequences, among other similar tasks. So it is a bit confusing when vos Savant fields such queries from the average Joe(whose IQ is 100)as, what's the difference between love and fondness? Or what is the nature of luck and coincidence? It's not obvious how the capacity to visualize objects and to figure out numerical patterns suits one to answer questions that have eluded some of the best poets and philosophers. Clearly, intelligence encompasses more than a score on a test. Just what does it mean to be smart? How much of intelligence can be specified, and how much can we learn about it from neurology, genetics, computer science and other fields? The defining term of intelligence in humans still seems to be the IQ score, even though IQ tests are not given as often as they used to be. The test comes primarily in two forms: the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scales(both come in adult and children's version). Generally costing several hundred dollars, they are usually given only by psychologists, although variations of them populate bookstores and the World Wide Web. Superhigh scores like vos Savant' s are no longer possible, because scoring is now based on a statistical population distribution among age peers, rather than simply dividing the mental age by the chronological age and multiplying by 100. Other standardized tests, such as the Scholastic Assessment Test(SAT)and the Graduate Record Exam(GRE), capture the main aspects of IQ tests. Such standardized tests may not assess all the important elements necessary to succeed in school and in life, argues Robert J. Sternberg. In his article "How Intelligent Is Intelligence Testing?", Sternberg notes that traditional test best assess analytical and verbal skills but fail to measure creativity and practical knowledge, components also critical to problem solving and life success. Moreover, IQ tests do not necessarily predict so well once populations or situations change. Research has found that IQ predicted leadership skills when the tests were given under low-stress conditions, but under high-stress conditions, IQ was negatively correlated with leadership—that is, it predicted the opposite. Anyone who has toiled through SAT will testify that test-taking skill also matters, whether it's knowing when to guess or what questions to skip.

Chronic insomnia is a major public health problem. And too many people are using 【B1】______ therapies, even while there are a few treatments that do work. Millions of Americans 【B2】______ awake at night counting sheep or have a stiff drink or 【B3】______ an pill, hoping it will make them sleepy. 【B4】______ experts agree all that self-medicating is a bad idea, and the causes of chronic insomnia remain【B5】______. Almost a third of adults have trouble sleeping, and about 10 percent have 【B6】______ of daytime impairment that signal true insomnia. But【B7】______the complaints, scientists know surprisingly little about what causes chronic insomnia, its health consequences and how best to treat it, a panel of specialists【B8】______together by the National Institutes of Health concluded Wednesday. The panel called 【B9】______ a broad range of research into insomnia,【B10】______that if scientists understood its【B11】______causes, they could develop better treatments. Most, but not all, insomnia is thought to【B12】______other health problems, from arthritis and depression to cardiovascular disease. The question often is whether the insomnia came first or was a result of the other diseases and how trouble sleeping in【B13】______complicates those other problems. Other diseases【B14】______, the risk of insomnia seems to increase with age and to be more【B15】______among women, especially after their 50s. Smoking, caffeine and numerous【B16】______drugs also affect sleep. The NIH is spending about $200 million this year on sleep-related research, some【B17】______to specific disorders and others【B18】______the underlying scientific laws that control the nervous system of sleep. The agency was【B19】______the pane' s review before deciding what additional work should be【B20】______at insomnia.

You are going to read a text about the tips on work-life balance, followed by a list of evidences. Choose the best evidence from the list A-G for each numbered subheading(1-5). There are two extra examples which you do not need to use. Lisa McGonagle has a husband, three kids and a public relations business in Boston. Her hectic life speaks volumes about what time management means to her. As she puts it: "I"m running all the time. " The same may apply to you. And that makes time management central to the health and growth of your life, profession and business. Truth should be known: Not everyone has a genuine handle on the effective use of time. So you"re not alone. Here are some suggestions that may help you get time on your side: 【C1】Don"t overbook. This may seem unusual to people who try to crowbar as much as possible into every workday. The problem is: Things rarely go according to a prearranged agenda. That means a lot of time falling through the cracks chasing down appointments, unreturned phone calls and other items that simply aren"t going to happen. 【C2】Prioritize ruthlessly. The secret to booking your time effectively boils down to knowing what" s important and what can wait. But it"s critical to use the sharpest knife possible in trimming the essential from the secondary. 【C3】Learn how to say no. One of the biggest land mines to effective time management is recognizing you don"t have to agree to everything and with everyone. Use your priority criteria to identify requests that simply aren"t worth your time. 【C4】Organize. Bringing your time into line isn"t just a matter of scheduling. The mechanics of how you operate can be every bit as important. That means organizing most every element to allow as smooth a workflow as possible. 【C5】Use technology. Although personal habits and practices can do wonders for time management, don"t overlook technology as yet another weapon to make the most effective use of your workday. [A]"Don"t try to plan on doing too many things," says McGonagle. "Assume that only 50% of the things you plan on doing today will actually get done. If you don"t, you"ll just waste valuable time trying to find out why things didn"t happen. " [B]"Be grateful for what goes right and learn from your mistakes," says Kurth. "Act as if they were scenes in a movie that you get to retake. " [C]For instance, Microsoft Business Contact Manager lets you organize a wide array of customer and product particulars, allowing quick and easy access. "Sticky notes are one of the worst things in the world," says McGonagle. "You should live by your database. That way, nothing is ever forgotten. " [D]"I"ve learned that saying no to one thing opens the door to saying yes to something else," says Kurth. "That can mean anything from cleaning my desk to getting a good night"s sleep. " [E]Part of effective time management is knowing when to shut things down. Turning off a cell phone or other wireless means of communication establishes boundaries. In short, it helps you balance your personal and professional time. [F]"Learn to ask questions that help you determine the level of urgency," says Krista Kurth, co-author of "Running on Plenty at Work". "Negotiate longer lead times whenever you can and don"t give into the "instant-and-immediate answer" syndrome. Treating everything as top priority is draining and depleting. " [G]"Everything in your business should be set up using logical systems so anyone needing anything can find it when they need it," says Peggy Duncan, an Atlanta-based personal productivity authority. "Eliminating clutter and the chaos it causes will give you a gift of 240 to 288 hours every year. "

BSection III Writing/B

OnCustomerServiceWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)giveyourcomments.

Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return? Since OPEC agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $26 a barrel, up from less than $10 last December. This near-tripling of oil prices calls up scary memories of the 1973 oil shock, when prices quadrupled, and 1979-80, when they also almost tripled. Both previous shocks resulted in double-digit inflation and global economic decline. So there are the headlines warning of gloom and doom this time? The oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil experts. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short item. Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, tuxes account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the price of crude have a more muted effect on pump prices than in the past. Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less sensitive to swings in the oil price. Energy conservation, a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP (in constant prices) rich economies now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimates in its latest Economic Outlook that, oil prices averaged $22 a barrel for a full year, compared with $13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only 0.25-0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980. On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies—to which heavy industry has shifted—have become more energy-intensive, and se could he more seriously squeezed. One more reason net to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economist"s commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%.

Maybe unemployment isn"t so bad after all. A new study says that having a demanding, unstable and thankless job may make you even【C1】______than not having a job at all. 【C2】______that a paid position gives workers purpose and a structured role, researchers had【C3】______thought that having any job would make a person happier than being【C4】______. That turns out to be true if you move into a high-quality job—but taking a bad job is【C5】______to mental health. Australian National University researchers looked at how various psychosocial work attributes affect 【C6】______. They found that poor-quality jobs—those with high demands, low control over decision making, low job【C7】______and an effort-reward imbalance—had more adverse effects on mental health than joblessness. Moving from unemployment to a job with high psychosocial quality was associated with【C8】______in mental health, the authors said【C9】______, the mental health of people in the least-satisfying jobs declined the【C10】______over time—and the worse the job, the more it affected workers" welfare. These findings【C11】______the importance of employment to a person"s welfare. Rather than seeking a new job, the study suggests, people who are unemployed or【C12】______in lousy work should seek new【C13】______that offer more security, autonomy and a 【C14】______workload. But that"s a lot【C15】______said than done. 【C16】______employers could be persuaded to be more【C17】______of the mental health of their workers—happier employees are a【C18】______to their employers. "The【C19】______of work conditions," the researchers noted, "may【C20】______a health cost, which over the longer term will be both economically and socially counterproductive."

On Losing Weight A. Title: On Losing Weight B. Word limit: 160-200 words (not including the given opening sentence) C. Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: "Losing weight has gained much popularity today, especially among girls." OUTLINE: 1. Many young people are keen on losing weight 2. The reasons 3. How to lose weight healthily