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发表于 2016-7-11 17:44:56
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Q4-Q6
Recently, Alex Stenner, a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, saved hundreds of dollars on tuition and hours spent in class. He signed up for a free online introduction to psychology course offered by Education Portal, of Mountain View, Calif.; crammed his studying into two weeks over the Christmas holidays; and then took the College Board's College Level Examination Program (CLEP).After he passed that exam, his university awarded him academic credit for the psychology course. That meant he'd obtained the course credits for only $90 - the cost of taking the CLEP - versus "having to pay $750 [to] $900 to take the course from the university," says Mr. Stenner.He now hopes "to be able to take up to four more courses this way."
As college costs mount, Americans are looking for creative ways to cut tuition bills. Two recent initiatives are getting lots of attention. One is the advent of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which are free courses open to anyone. The second is the debut inTexas of the $10,000 tuition plan."If [widely] adopted, those two ideas would certainly lower students' cost of college," says Richard Vedder, director of The Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington. "They're clearly viable plans, since they exist in some forms already."The $10,000 tuition plan addresses college costs directly. Proposed in 2011 by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the plan calls for creating a degree program capped at $10,000 for tuition and textbooks at Texas' public colleges and universities. Colleges could accomplish this through a variety of methods, such as using online courses, followed by competency-based exams; partnering with community colleges that offer a year of courses before the student transfers to a four-year institution; and having students enroll in some college classes while still in high school.
本段出现考点：What does the case of Alex Stenner tell us? What are the MOOCs? 第一问的定位在第一段和第二段开头：这名学生通过网络学习，以极低的价格获得了同样的学分。MOOC的定位在第二段。
本段是另一题考点：What is the Texas $10000 tuition plan? Why does Thomas Lindsay say it is sparking a "revolution"? 答题定位在划线句子部分。这个计划旨在大幅度削减大学学费，于2011年由德州政府提出。该计划建立了一套取得学位的课程，最多需要1万美元学费和书本费。大学可以通过多种方式实现该计划，如在线课程配合能力考试等。
The idea is sparking "a revolution," says Thomas Lindsay, head of the Center for Higher Education at the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin.Already, 13 Texas public universities have adopted some variation on the $10,000 degree. In November, Florida's Gov. Rick Scott challenged his state's community colleges to offer $10,000 bachelor's degrees. California Assemblyman Dan Logue has introduced a bill that would limit tuition to no more than $10,000 for undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math degrees at California's state universities.
Not everyone is a fan. Critics point out that the tuition cap may save money for students, but it does little to help colleges and universities shave costs. It's "a populist gimmick by lawmakers," says Daniel Hurley, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities in Washington. This "diversionary rhetoric" is destined to "be short-lived."Voters seem skeptical, too. Only 29 percent of Florida voters in a December poll by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., believe it's "somewhat" or "very" likely that Florida colleges will be able to offer four-year degree programs for $10,000.The other cost-cutting initiative, online MOOC offerings, has been surging in popularity, especially over the past year. These free courses offer anyone, anywhere, the chance to obtain instruction from big-name schools, in many cases.
本段出现了另一个考点：What are the views of critic and voters? What are the major problems with online courses?本段开头就提出并非每个人都支持这个计划。虽然省掉了学生的费用，然而大学却很难省钱，因此有人批评这是政客们拉拢人心的小伎俩。批评者认为这种做法注定"长不了"。选民看来也不买账，只有布道三分之一的选民认为计划可能付诸实施。
Among the best-known providers in the United States are edX, which developed out of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Coursera and Udacity, which originated out of Stanford University. These MOOC providers partner with top colleges and universities, or specific professors, to obtain their materials.In addition, some universities are creating free online courses for their own use. Some businesses have also begun offering online courses, although the courses aren't always free.More than 2.4 million people are enrolled currently in offerings of Coursera, based in Mountain View, Calif., while Udacity, of Palo Alto, Calif., has some 1 million enrollees - including fully 240,000 in Udacity's introduction to computer science course, says its chief executive officer, Sebastian Thrun. In addition, edX, of Cambridge, Mass., claims close to 600,000 students.
The catch: MOOCs are rarely accepted for college credit - although they may provide certificates of course completion. They also have very high (some say 90 percent) dropout rates.
And for colleges, they raise troubling questions about how online courses fit into an overall college experience, how to maintain educational quality in cut-rate college courses, and how to raise revenue if more students migrate to free online courses.Those are questions colleges will have to answer if these cost-cutting initiatives are to gain traction. (《基督教科学箴言报》)
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