[填空题]

Though hardly as unwelcome as death or taxes, college entrance exams are just as inevitable and almost as dreaded by high school students.
As the testing dates loom for juniors and seniors for the SAT (formerly called the Scholastic Assessment Test) and the American College Test, or ACT, most students are looking for an edge, any edge, in the competition.
And as the number of homes with computers continues to rise, test publishers and software developers have been quick to recognize a growing niche. With the market for test preparation materials at all levels estimated at $540 million annually, they have jumped on the tech bandwagon to produce computerized tutorials that promise to boost scores.
(41)"We believe that it’s important for a student to be prepared to take the tests," notes Don Powers, a research scientist at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N. J. , the organization that administers the SAT for the College Board.<

[名词解释]brain death

[单项选择] The Carnegie Foundation report says that many colleges have tried to be" all things to all people". In doing so, they have increasingly catered to a narrow minded careerism while failing to cultivate a global vision among their students. The current crisis, it contends, does not derive from a legitimate desire to put learning to productive ends. The problem is that in too many academic fields, the work has no context; skills, rather than being means, have become ends. Students are offered a variety of options and allowed to pick their way to a degree. In short, driven by careerism," the nation’’ s colleges and universities are more successful in providing credentials (文凭) than in providing a quality education for their students." The report concludes that the special challenge confronting the undergraduate college is one of shaping an" integrated core" of common learning. Such a core would introduce students "to essential knowledge, to connections across the disciplines, and in the
A. most of them lack high-quality faculties
B. the interests of most faculty members lie in research
C. there are not enough incentives for students to study hard
D. they attach greater importance to research and publication than to teaching