2024年2月16日发(作者：)

Universities Branch Out

A) As never before in their long history, universities have become instruments of national

competition as well as instruments of peace. They are the place of the scientific

discoveries thatmove economies forward, and the primary means of educating the

talent required to obtain and maintain competitive advantage. But at the same time, the

opening of national borders to the flow of goods, services, information and especially

people has made universities a powerful force for global integration, mutual

understanding and geopolitical stability.

B) In response to the same forces that have driven the world economy, universities have

become more self-consciously global: seeking students from around the world who

represent the entire range of cultures and values, sending their own students abroad to

prepare them for global careers, offering courses of study that address the challenges of

aninterconnected world and collaborative(合作的) research programs to advance

science for the benefit of all humanity.

C) Of the forces shaping higher education noneis more sweeping than the movement

across borders. Over the past three decades the number of students leaving home each

year to study abroad has grown at an annual rate of 3.9 percent, from 800,000 in 1975

to 2.5 million in 2004. Most travel from one developed nation to another, but the flow

from developing to developed countries is growing rapidly. The reverse flow, from

developed to developing countries, is on the rise, too. Today foreign students earn 30

percent ofthe doctoral degrees awarded in the United States and 38 percent of those in

the United Kingdom. And the number crossing borders for undergraduate study is

growing as well, to 8 percent of the undergraduates at America’s best institutions and

10 percent of all undergraduates in the U.K. In the United States, 20 percent of the

newly hired professors in science and engineering are foreign-born, and in China many

newly hired faculty members at the top research universities received their graduate

education abroad.

D) Universities are also encouraging students to spend some of their undergraduate years

in another country. In Europe, more than 140,000 students participate in the Erasmus

program each year, taking courses for credit in one of 2,200 participating institutions

across the continent. And in the United States, institutions are helping place students in

summer internships(实习) abroad to prepare them for global careers. Yale and Harvard

have led the way, offering every undergraduate at least one international study or

internship opportunity—and providing the financial resources to make it possible.

E) Globalization is also reshaping the way research is done. One new trend involves

sourcing portions of a research program to another country. Yale professor and Howard

Hughes Medical Institute investigator Tian Xu directs a research center focused on the

genetics of human disease at Shanghai’s Fudan University, in collaboration with faculty

colleagues from both Shanghai center has 95 employees and graduate

students working in a 4,300-square-meter laboratory facility. Yale faculty, postdoctors

and graduate students visit regularly and attend videoconference seminars with

scientists from both campuses. The arrangement benefits both countries; Xu’s Yale lab

is more productive, thanks to the lower costs of conducting research in China, and

Chinese graduate students, postdoctors and faculty get on-the-job training from a

world-class scientist and his U.S. team.

F) As a result of its strength in science, the United States has consistently led the world in

the commercialization of major new technologies, from the mainframe computer and

the integrated circuit of the 1960s to the Internet infrastructure (根底设施) and

applications software of the 1990s. The link between university-based science and

industrial application is often indirect but sometimes highly visible: Silicon Valley was

intentionally created by Stanford University, and Route 128 outside Boston has long

housed companies spun off from MIT and Harvard. Around the world, governments

have encouraged copying of this model, perhaps most successfully in Cambridge,

England, where Microsoft and scores of other leading software and biotechnology

companies have set up shop around the university.

G) For all its success, the United States remains deeply hesitant about sustaining the

research-university model. Most politicians recognize the link between investment in

science and national economic strength, but support for research funding has been

unsteady. The budget of the National Institutes of Health doubled between 1998 and

2003, but has risen more slowly than inflation since then. Support for the physical

sciences and engineering barely kept pace with inflation during that same period. The

attempt to make up lost ground is welcome, but the nation would be better served by

steady, predictable increases in science funding at the rate of long-term GDP growth,

which is on the order of inflation plus 3 percent per year.

H) American politicians have great difficulty recognizing that admitting more foreign

students can greatly promote the national interest by increasing international

understanding. Adjusted for inflation, public funding for international exchanges and

foreign-language study is well below the levels of 40 years ago. In the wake of

September 11, changes in the visa process caused a dramatic decline in the number of

foreign students seeking admission to U.S. universities, and a corresponding surge in

enrollments in Australia, Singapore and the U.K. Objections from American university

and business leaders led to improvements in the process and a reversal of the decline,

but the United States is still seen by many as unwelcoming to international students.

I) Most Americans recognize that universities contribute to the nation’s well-being

through their scientific research, but many fear that foreign students threaten American

competitiveness by taking their knowledge and skills back home. They fail to grasp that

welcoming foreign students to the United States has two important positive effects: first,

the very best of them stay in the States and—like immigrants throughout

history—strengthen the nation; and second, foreign students who study in the United

States become ambassadors for many of its most cherished(珍视) values when they

return home. Or at least they understand them better. In America as elsewhere, few

instruments of foreign policy are as effective in promoting peace and stability as

welcoming international university students.

注意：此局部试题请在答题卡2上作答。

46. American universities prepare their undergraduates for global careers by giving them

chances for international study or internship.

47. Since the mid-1970s, the enrollment of overseas students has increased at an annual

rate of 3.9 percent.

48. The enrollment of international students will have a positive impact on America rather

than threaten its competitiveness.

49. The way research is carried out in universities has changed as a result of globalization.

50. Of the newly hired professors in science and engineering in the United States, twenty

percent come from foreign countries.

51. The number of foreign students applying toU.S. universities decreased sharply after

September 11 due to changes in the visa process.

52. The U.S. federal funding for research has been unsteady for years.

53. Around the world, governments encourage the model of linking university-based

science and industrial application.

54. Present-day universities have become a powerful force for global integration.

55. When foreign students leave America, theywill bring American values back to their

home countries.

Into the Unknown

The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope?

[A] Until the early 1990s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older.

The UN had the foresight to convene a “world assembly on ageing〞 back in 1982,

but that came and went. By 1994 the World Bank had noticed that something big

was happening. In a report entitled “Averting the Old Age Crisis〞, it argued that

pension arrangements in most countries were unsustainable.

[B] For the next ten years a succession of books, mainly by Americans, sounded the

alarm. They had titles like Young vs Old, Gray Dawn and The Coming

Generational Storm, and their message was blunt: health-care systems were

heading for the rocks, pensioners were taking young people to the cleaners, and

soon there would be intergenerational warfare.

[C] Since then the debate has become less emotional, not least because a lot more is

known about the subject. Books, conferences and research papers have multiplied.

International organisations such as the OECD and the EU issue regular reports.

Population ageing is on every agenda, from G8 economic conferences to NATO

summits. The World Economic Forum plans to consider the future of pensions

and health care at its prestigious Davos conference early next year. The media,

including this newspaper, are giving the subject extensive coverage.

[D] Whether all that attention has translated into sufficient action is another question.

Governments in rich countries now accept that their pension and health-care

promises will soon become unaffordable, and many of them have embarked on

reforms, but so far only timidly. That is not surprising: politicians with an eye on

the next election will hardly rush to introduce unpopular measures that may not

bear fruit for years, perhaps decades.

[E] The outline of the changes needed is clear. To avoid fiscal (财政的) meltdown,

public pensions and health-care provision will have to be reined back severely and

taxes may have to go up. By far the most effective method to restrain pension

spending is to give people the opportunity to work longer, because it increases tax

revenues and reduces spending on pensions at the same time. It may even keep

them alive longer. John Rother, the AARP’s head of policy and strategy, points to

studies showing that other things being equal, people who remain at work have

lower death rates than their retired peers.

[F] Younger people today mostly accept that they will have to work for longer and

that their pensions will be less generous. Employers still need to be persuaded that

older workers are worth holding on to. That may be because they have had plenty

of younger ones to choose from, partly thanks to the post-war baby-boom and

partly because over the past few decades many more women have entered the

labour force, increasing employers’ choice. But the reservoir of women able and

willing to take up paid work is running low, and the baby-boomers are going grey.

[G] In many countries immigrants have been filling such gaps in the labour force as

have already emerged (and remember that the real shortage is still around ten

years off). Immigration in the developed world is the highest it has ever been, and

it is making a useful difference. In still-fertile America it currently accounts for

about 40% of total population growth, and in fast-ageing western Europe for

about 90%.

[H] On the face of it, it seems the perfect solution. Many developing countries have

lots of young people in need of jobs; many rich countries need helping hands that

will boost tax revenues and keep up economic growth. But over the next few

decades labour forces in rich countries are set to shrink so much that inflows of

immigrants would have to increase enormously to compensate: to at least twice

their current size in western Europe’s most youthful countries, and three times in

the older ones. Japan would need a large multiple of the few immigrants it has at

present. Public opinion polls show that people in most rich countries already think

that immigration is too high. Further big increases would be politically unfeasible.

[I] To tackle the problem of ageing populations at its root, “old〞 countries would

have to rejuvenate (使年轻) themselves by having more of their own children. A

number of them have tried, some more successfully than others. But it is not a

simple matter of offering financial incentives or providing more child care.

Modern urban life in rich countries is not well adapted to large families. Women

find it hard to combine family and career. They often compromise by having just

one child.[J] And if fertility in ageing countries does not pick up? It will not be the end of the

world, at least not for quite a while yet, but the world will slowly become a

different place. Older societies may be less innovative and more strongly

disinclined to take risks than younger ones. By 2025 at the latest, about half the

voters in America and most of those in western European countries will be over

50—and older people turn out to vote in much greater numbers than younger ones.

Academic studies have found no evidence so far that older voters have used their

power at the ballot box to push for policies that specifically benefit them, though

if in future there are many more of them they might start doing so.

[K] Nor is there any sign of the intergenerational warfare predicted in the 1990s. After

all, older people themselves mostly have families. In a recent study of parents and

grown-up children in 11 European countries, Karsten Hank of Mannheim

University found that 85% of them lived within 25km of each other and the

majority of them were in touch at least once a week.

[L] Even so, the shift in the centre of gravity to older age groups is bound to have a

profound effect on societies, not just economically and politically but in all sorts

of other ways too. Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of America’s CSIS, in a

thoughtful book called The Graying of the Great Powers, argue that, among other

things, the ageing of the developed countries will have a number of serious

security implications.

[M] For example, the shortage of young adults is likely to make countries more

reluctant to commit the few they have to military service. In the decades to 2050,

America will find itself playing an ever-increasing role in the developed world’s

defence effort. Because America’s population will still be growing when that of

most other developed countries is shrinking, America will be the only developed

country that still matters geopolitically (地缘政治上).

Ask me in 2021

[N] There is little that can be done to stop population ageing, so the world will have to

live with it. But some of the consequences can be alleviated. Many experts now

believe that given the right policies, the effects, though grave, need not be

catastrophic. Most countries have recognised the need to do something and are

beginning to act.

[O] But even then there is no guarantee that their efforts will work. What is happening

now is historically unprecedented. Ronald Lee, director of the Centre on the

Economics and Demography of Ageing at the University of California, Berkeley,

puts it briefly and clearly: “We don’t really know what population ageing will be

like, because nobody has done it yet.〞

注意：此局部试题请在答题卡 2 上作答。

46. Employers should realise it is important to keep older workers in the workforce.

47. A recent study found that most old people in some European countries

had

regular weekly contact with their adult children.

48. Few governments in rich countries have launched bold reforms to tackle

the

problem of population ageing.

49. In a report published some 20 years ago, the sustainability of old-age pension

systems in most countries was called into doubt.

50. Countries that have a shortage of young adults will be less willing to send them

to

war.

51. One-child families are more common in ageing societies due to the stress of

urban life and the difficulties of balancing family and career.

52. A series of books, mostly authored by Americans, warned of conflicts between the older and younger generations.

53. Compared with younger ones, older societies tend to be less innovative and

take

fewer risks.

54. The best solution to the pension crisis is to postpone the retirement age.

55. Immigration as a means to boost the shrinking labour force may meet

with

resistance in some rich countries.