《经济学家》读译参考1-.docVIP

Jan 19th 2006 | NEW YORKFrom The Economist print editionRebuilding the American dream machine FOR Americas colleges, January is a month of reckoning. Most applications for the next academic year beginning in the autumn have to be made by the end of December, so a universitys popularity is put to an objective standard: how many people want to attend. One of the more unlikely offices to have been flooded with mail is that of the City University of New York (CUNY), a public college that lacks, among other things, a famous sports team, bucolic campuses and raucous parties (it doesnt even have dorms), and, until recently, academic credibility. A primary draw at CUNY is a programme for particularly clever students, launched in 2001. Some 1,100 of the 60,000 students at CUNYs five top schools receive a rare thing in the costly world of American colleges: free education. Those accepted by CUNYs honours programme pay no tuition fees; instead they receive a stipend of $7,500 (to help with general expenses) and a laptop computer. Applications for early admissions into next years programme are up 70%. Admission has nothing to do with being an athlete, or a child of an alumnus, or having an influential sponsor, or being a member of a particularly aggrieved ethnic group—criteria that are increasingly important at Americas elite colleges. Most of the students who apply to the honours programme come from relatively poor families, many of them immigrant ones. All that CUNY demands is that these students be diligent and clever. Last year, the average standardised test score of this group was in the top 7% in the country. Among the rest of CUNYs students averages are lower, but they are now just breaking into the top third (compared with the bottom third in 1997). CUNY does not appear alongside Harvard and Stanford on lists of Americas top colleges, but its recent transformation offers a neat parable of meritocracy revisited.Until the 1960s, a good case could be made that the best