填空题
The University as Business
A number of colleges and universities have announced steep
tuition increases for next year much steeper than the current,
very low, rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed because of
a loss in value of university endowments' heavily investing in common （1）
stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizes
its net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; and increasingly the （2）
outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of （3）
firms. The rise in tuitions mayreflect the fact economic uncertainty （4）
increases the demand for education. The biggest cost of being
in the school is foregoing income from a job (this isprimarily a factor in （5）
graduate and professional-school tuition); the poor one' s job prospects, （6）
the more sense it makes to reallocate time from the job market to
education,in order to make oneself more marketable. The
ways which universities make themselves attractive to students（7）
include soft majors, student evaluations of teachers, giving students
a governance role, and eliminate required courses. （8）
Sky-high tuitions have caused universities to regard their students as
customers.Just as business firms sometimes collude to shorten the （9）
rigors of competition, universities collude to minimize the cost to
them of the athletes whom they recruit in order to stimulate alumni
donations,so the best athletes now often bypass higher education in
order to obtain salaries earlier from professional teams. And until
they were stopped by the antitrust authorities, the Ivy League schools
colluded to limit competition for the best students, by agreeing not to
award scholarships on the basis of merit rather than purely of need-just
like business firms agreeing not to give discounts on their best （10）
customer.