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　　熟悉四六級閱讀理解題型的同學應該都了解，英語四六級考試閱讀理解材料大多選自《時代》《衛報》《科學美國人》等外刊。要想閱讀理解這部分拿到高分，必須在平常多閱讀，掌握新詞匯，鍛煉閱讀速度。

　　【今日閱讀推薦】本篇閱讀材料“美國去年女博士人數首次超過男博士”選自《華盛頓郵報》（原文標題：More women than men got PhDs last year ），如果大家覺得比較簡單，就當作泛讀材料了解了解，認識幾個新單詞或新表達方式也不錯。如果大家覺得這些材料理解上有難度，不妨當做挑戰自己的拔高訓練，希望大家都有進步^^

　　For the first time, more women than men in the United States received doctoral degrees last year, the culmination of decades of change in the status of women at colleges nationwide.

　　culmination n. 頂點；高潮

　　The number of women at every level of academia has been rising for decades. Women now hold a nearly 3-to-2 majority in undergraduate and graduate education. Doctoral study was the last holdout - the only remaining area of higher education that still had an enduring male majority.

　　Of the doctoral degrees awarded in the 2008-09 academic year, 28,962 went to women and 28,469 to men, according to an annual enrollment report from the Council of Graduate Schools, based in Washington.

　　Doctoral degrees, which require an average of seven years' study, are typically the last to show the impact of long-term changes. "It is a trend that has been snaking its way through the educational pipeline," said Nathan Bell, the report's author and the director of research and policy analysis for the council. "It was bound to happen."

　　pipeline n. 管道；輸油管；傳遞途徑

　　be bound to 注定；必然；一定要

　　Women have long outnumbered men in earning master's degrees, especially in education. Women earned nearly six in 10 graduate degrees in 2008-09, according to the new report, which is based on an annual survey of graduate institutions.

　　outnumber vt. 數目超過；比…多

　　But women who aspired to become college professors, a common path for those with doctorates, were hindered by the particular demands of faculty life. Studies have found that the tenure clock often collides with the biological clock: The busiest years of the academic career are the years that well-educated women tend to have children.

　　aspire vi. 渴望；立志；追求

　　hinder vi. 成為阻礙 vt. 阻礙；打擾 adj. 后面的

　　collide with 沖突；碰撞

　　"Many women feel they have to choose between having a career in academics and having a family," said Catherine Hill, director of research at the American Association of University Women. "Of course, they shouldn't have to."

　　Undergraduate women began reaching parity with men in the early 1980s as societal barriers to female scholarship fell away. And then they eclipsed men - so thoroughly that federal officials are now investigating whether some liberal arts schools are favoring men in admissions to preserve some semblance of gender balance.

　　eclipse vt. 使黯然失色；形成蝕 n. 日蝕，月蝕；黯然失色

　　A freshman seminar at the University of Iowa called "Graduate School: Is It for You?" drew 16 students last year, Associate Provost John Keller said. Fifteen of them were women.

　　Scholarly attention in recent years has turned to the fallen aspirations of men, who are more likely than women to drop out of high school and more apt to be diverted from higher education into menial labor or prison. Men also join the military in disproportionate numbers.

　　Overall, women and girls make up 51 percent of the U.S. population. But women have not conquered every corridor of the ivory tower. Men still hold the majority of faculty and administration positions. Women earn less than men at every level of academic rank, according to the American Association of University Professors. Male faculty members earned $87,206 on average and their female counterparts made $70,600 in the 2009-10 academic year. Starting salaries for newly minted faculty members are nearly equal.

　　Men retained the lead in doctoral degrees until 2008, largely through their dominance in engineering, mathematics and the physical sciences. They still earn nearly 80 percent of engineering doctorates.

　　retain vt. 保持；雇；記住

　　drop out 退學；綴學

　　be apt to 傾向于

　　The increase in women receiving doctoral degrees resulted from years of persistent gains across several areas of study. In the health sciences, for example, the number has risen at a rate of 14 percent per year over the past decade. Women now earn 70 percent of doctorates in that field. They represent 67 percent of doctoral degrees in education, and 60 percent in social and behavioral sciences.

　　The same economic forces that drove more women into the labor market sent greater numbers of them into doctoral study, "aware of the increased need for them to make money for their families," Hill said.

　　Women approached parity with men in law and medical studies in recent years, said Jacqueline E. King, an assistant vice president at the American Council on Education. "Doctoral fields couldn't be far behind," she said.

　　parity n. 平價；同等；相等

　　result from 起因于；由……造成

　　Liz Nguyen, 25, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland in chemistry, a field in which women have made gains but remain outnumbered. Many of her classmates are women, but the older generation of senior faculty is made up virtually of all men. "It was always just a male-dominated field," she said.

　　Nguyen said the women she has met in doctoral study are "very strong-willed women. I never saw women like that growing up."

　　Men may be staging a modest comeback. First-time enrollment in graduate education grew at a slightly faster rate for them than for women in 2009, reversing a long-term trend that has favored female enrollment. Meanwhile, the broader gender gap in higher education seems to be stabilizing. The split in enrollment and degrees remained constant through much of the past decade at about 57 percent women, according to a study King wrote this year.

　　reverse n. 背面；相反；倒退；失敗 vt. 顛倒；倒轉

　　split vt. 分離；使分離；劈開；離開 vi. 離開；被劈開；斷絕關系

　　"In general, higher education has expanded over the years to meet demand from both women and men," she said. "I don't expect that it's ever going to be all women."

　　Question time:

　　1. In the areas of higher education, which one still had an enduring male majority?

　　2. Why did more women than men get PhDs?

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　　【答案】

　　1. Doctoral study was the only remaining area of higher education that still had an enduring male majority.

　　2. It was resulted from women's years of persistent gains across several areas of study. Moreover, the same economic forces that drove more women into the labor market sent greater numbers of them into doctoral study.

　　推薦：2012年12月英語四六級試題、答案專題>>　免費在線估分>>

　　備考攻略：報考四級網校　做模擬試題　記憶詞匯　歷年真題　模擬試題　范文背誦

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