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Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)
Universities Branch Out
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  that move 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.
In response to the same forces that have driven the world economy, universities have become more self-consciously global: seeking students from  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 an interconnected world and collaborative(合作的) research programs to advance science for rhc benefit 0f all humanity.
Of the forces shaping higher education none is 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 art 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 of the doctoral degrees awarded in the United States and 38 percent of those m 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 ihc 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.
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.
Globalisation is also reshaping the way research is done. One new trend souring portions of a research program to another country. Yale professor and Howard Hunghes Medical institute investigator Tian Xu directs a research center focused on the genetics of human disease at Shanghai's Fudan University,in collaborate with faculty colleagues from both school ; The Shanghaicenter has 95 employees and graduate students working in a 4,300-square-meter laboratry 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, postdoctor and faculty get on-the-job training from a world-class scientist and his U.S.team.
For all its success, the Untied States remendis 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 1 h 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.
进入-->2007年12月22日英语四级考试试卷快速阅读题目部分
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