What must universities show to win rec...

Nothing succeeds in business books like the study of success. The current business-book boom was launched in 1982 by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman with In Search of Excellence. The trend has continued with a succession of experts and would-be experts who promise to distil the essence of excellence into three (or five or seven) simple rules. The Three Rules is a self-conscious contribution to this type of writing; it even includes a bibliography of "success studies". Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed work for a consultancy. Deloitte, that is determined to turn itself into more of a thought-leader and less a corporate repairman. They employ all the tricks of the success books. They insist that their conclusions are "measurable and actionable"—guides to behavior rather than analysis for its own sake. Success authors usually serve up vivid stories about how exceptional businesspeople stamped their personalities on a company or rescued it from a life-threatening crisis. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed are happier chewing the numbers: they provide detailed appendices on "calculating the elements of advantage" and "detailed analysis". The authors spent five years studying the behavior of their 344 " exceptional companies", only to come up at first with nothing. Every hunch(直觉) led to a blind alley and every hypothesis to a dead end. It was only when they shifted their attention from how companies behave to how they think that they began to make sense of their voluminous material. Management is all about making difficult tradeoffs in conditions that are always uncertain and often fast-changing. But exceptional companies approach these tradeoffs with two simple rules in mind, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. First: better before cheaper. Companies are more likely to succeed in the long run if they compete on quality or performance than on price. Second: revenue before cost. Companies have more to gain in the long run from driving up revenue than by driving down costs. Most success studies suffer from two faults. There is "the (光环) effect", whereby good performance leads commentators to attribute all manner of virtues to anything and everything the company does. These virtues then suddenly become vices when the company fails. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed work hard to avoid these mistakes by studying large bodies of data over several decades. But they end up embracing a different error: stating the obvious. Most businesspeople will not be surprised to learn that it is better to find a profitable niche(缝隙市场) and focus on boosting your revenues than to compete on price and cut your way to success. The difficult question is how to find that profitable niche and protect it. There, The Three Rules is less useful.What kind of business books are most likely to sell well

A．Books on excellence.
B．Guides to management.
C．Books on business rules.
D．Analyses of market trends.

Until recently, the University of Kent prided itself on its friendly image. Not any more. Over the past few months it has been working hard, with the help of media consultants, to play down its cosy reputation in favour of something more academic and serious. Kent is not alone in considering an image revamp (翻新). Changes to next year’s funding regime are forcing universities to justify charging students up to ￡ 9,000 in fees. Nowadays universities are putting much more of a focus on their brands and what their value propositions are. While in the past universities have often focused on student social life and attractions of the university town in recruitment campaigns, they are now concentrating on more tangible (实在的) attractions, such as employment prospects, engagement with industry, and lecturer contact hours, making clear exactly what students are going to get for their money. The problem for universities is that if those benefits fail to materialise, students notice. That worries Rob Behrens, who deals with student complaints. "Universities need to be extremely careful in describing what’s going to happen to students," he says. "As competition is going to get greater for attracting gifted students, there is a danger that universities will go the extra mile." One university told prospective engineering students they would be able to design a car and race it at Brands Hatch, which never happened, he says. Others have promised use of sophisticated equipment that turned out to be broken or unavailable. "If universities spent as much money on handling complaints and appeals appropriately as they spend on marketing, they would do better at keeping students, and in the National Student Survey returns," he says. Ongoing research tracking prospective 2012 students suggests that they are not only becoming more sophisticated in thinking about what they want from a university, but are also spending more time researching evidence to back up institutional claims. Hence the growing importance of the student survey. From next September, all institutions will also be expected to publish on their websites key information sets, allowing easier comparison between institutions, between promises and reality, and the types of jobs and salaries graduates go on to. As a result, it is hardly surprising that universities are beginning to change the way they market themselves. While the best form of marketing for institutions is to be good at what they do, they also need to be clear about how they are different from others. And it is vital that once an institution claims to be particularly good at something, it must live up to it. The moment you position yourself, you become exposed, and if you fail in that you are in trouble.What was the University of Kent famous for

A．Its comfortable campus life.
B．Its up-to-date course offerings.
C．Its distinguished teaching staff.
D．Its diverse academic programmes.

单项选择题

It is easy to miss amid the day-to-day headlines of global economic recession, but there is a less conspicuous kind of social upheaval (剧变) underway that is fast altering both the face of the planet and the way human beings live. That change is the rapid acceleration of urbanization. In 2008, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population was living in towns and cities. And as a recently published paper shows, the process of urbanization will only accelerate in the decades to come—with an enormous impact on biodiversity and potentially on climate change. As Karen Seto, the lead author of the paper, points out, the wave of urbanization isn’t just about the migration of people into urban environments, but about the environments themselves becoming bigger to accommodate all those people. The rapid expansion of urban areas will have a huge impact on biodiversity hotspots and on carbon emissions in those urban areas. Humans are the ultimate invasive species—when they move into new territory, they often displace the wildlife that was already living there. And as land is cleared for those new cities—especially in the dense tropical forests—carbon will be released into the atmosphere as well. It’s true that as people in developing nations move from the countryside to the city, the shift may reduce the pressure on land, which could in turn be good for the environment. This is especially so in desperately poor countries, where residents in the countryside slash and burn forests each growing season to clear, space for farming. But the real difference is that in developing nations, the move from rural areas to cities often leads to an accompanying increase in income—and that increase leads to an increase in the consumption of food and energy, which in turn causes a rise in carbon emissions. Getting enough to eat and enjoying the safety and comfort of living fully on the grid is certainly a good thing—but it does carry an environmental price. The urbanization wave can’t be stopped—and it shouldn’t be. But Seto’s paper does underscore the importance of managing that transition. If we do it the right way, we can reduce urbanization’s impact on the environment. "There’s an enormous opportunity here, and a lot of pressure and responsibility to think about how we urbanize," says Seto. One thing that’s clear is that we can’t build cities the way we have over the last couple of hundred years. The scale of this transition won’t allow that. We’re headed towards an urban planet no matter what, but whether it becomes heaven or hell is up to us.What issue does the author try to draw people’s attention to

A．The shrinking biodiversity worldwide.
B．The rapid increase of world population.
C．The ongoing global economic recession.
D．The impact of accelerating urbanization.

单项选择题

Nothing succeeds in business books like the study of success. The current business-book boom was launched in 1982 by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman with In Search of Excellence. The trend has continued with a succession of experts and would-be experts who promise to distil the essence of excellence into three (or five or seven) simple rules. The Three Rules is a self-conscious contribution to this type of writing; it even includes a bibliography of "success studies". Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed work for a consultancy. Deloitte, that is determined to turn itself into more of a thought-leader and less a corporate repairman. They employ all the tricks of the success books. They insist that their conclusions are "measurable and actionable"—guides to behavior rather than analysis for its own sake. Success authors usually serve up vivid stories about how exceptional businesspeople stamped their personalities on a company or rescued it from a life-threatening crisis. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed are happier chewing the numbers: they provide detailed appendices on "calculating the elements of advantage" and "detailed analysis". The authors spent five years studying the behavior of their 344 " exceptional companies", only to come up at first with nothing. Every hunch(直觉) led to a blind alley and every hypothesis to a dead end. It was only when they shifted their attention from how companies behave to how they think that they began to make sense of their voluminous material. Management is all about making difficult tradeoffs in conditions that are always uncertain and often fast-changing. But exceptional companies approach these tradeoffs with two simple rules in mind, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. First: better before cheaper. Companies are more likely to succeed in the long run if they compete on quality or performance than on price. Second: revenue before cost. Companies have more to gain in the long run from driving up revenue than by driving down costs. Most success studies suffer from two faults. There is "the (光环) effect", whereby good performance leads commentators to attribute all manner of virtues to anything and everything the company does. These virtues then suddenly become vices when the company fails. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed work hard to avoid these mistakes by studying large bodies of data over several decades. But they end up embracing a different error: stating the obvious. Most businesspeople will not be surprised to learn that it is better to find a profitable niche(缝隙市场) and focus on boosting your revenues than to compete on price and cut your way to success. The difficult question is how to find that profitable niche and protect it. There, The Three Rules is less useful.What does the author imply about books on success so far

A．They help businessmen one way or another.
B．They are written by well-recognized experts.
C．They more or less fall into the same stereotype.
D．They are based on analyses of corporate leaders.

单项选择题

Until recently, the University of Kent prided itself on its friendly image. Not any more. Over the past few months it has been working hard, with the help of media consultants, to play down its cosy reputation in favour of something more academic and serious. Kent is not alone in considering an image revamp (翻新). Changes to next year’s funding regime are forcing universities to justify charging students up to ￡ 9,000 in fees. Nowadays universities are putting much more of a focus on their brands and what their value propositions are. While in the past universities have often focused on student social life and attractions of the university town in recruitment campaigns, they are now concentrating on more tangible (实在的) attractions, such as employment prospects, engagement with industry, and lecturer contact hours, making clear exactly what students are going to get for their money. The problem for universities is that if those benefits fail to materialise, students notice. That worries Rob Behrens, who deals with student complaints. "Universities need to be extremely careful in describing what’s going to happen to students," he says. "As competition is going to get greater for attracting gifted students, there is a danger that universities will go the extra mile." One university told prospective engineering students they would be able to design a car and race it at Brands Hatch, which never happened, he says. Others have promised use of sophisticated equipment that turned out to be broken or unavailable. "If universities spent as much money on handling complaints and appeals appropriately as they spend on marketing, they would do better at keeping students, and in the National Student Survey returns," he says. Ongoing research tracking prospective 2012 students suggests that they are not only becoming more sophisticated in thinking about what they want from a university, but are also spending more time researching evidence to back up institutional claims. Hence the growing importance of the student survey. From next September, all institutions will also be expected to publish on their websites key information sets, allowing easier comparison between institutions, between promises and reality, and the types of jobs and salaries graduates go on to. As a result, it is hardly surprising that universities are beginning to change the way they market themselves. While the best form of marketing for institutions is to be good at what they do, they also need to be clear about how they are different from others. And it is vital that once an institution claims to be particularly good at something, it must live up to it. The moment you position yourself, you become exposed, and if you fail in that you are in trouble.What are universities trying to do to attract students

A．Improve their learning environment.
B．Offer more scholarships to the gifted.
C．Upgrade their campus facilities.
D．Present a better academic image.

单项选择题

When Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched the facebook. com in Feb. 2004, even he could not imagine the forces it would let loose. His intent was to connect college students. Facebook, which is what this website rapidly evolved into, ended up connecting the world. To the children of this connected era, the world is one giant social network. They are not bound—as were previous generations of humans—by what they were taught. They are only limited by their curiosity and ambition. During my childhood, all knowledge was local. You learned everything you knew from your parents, teachers, preachers, and friends. With the high-quality and timely information at their fingertips, today’s children are rising above the fears and biases of their parents. Adults are also participating in this revolution. India’s normally tame middle class is speaking up against social ills. Silicon Valley executives are being shamed into adding women to their boards. Political leaders are marshalling the energy of millions for elections and political causes. All of this is being done with social media technologies that Facebook and its competitors set free. As does every advancing technology, social media has created many new problems. It is commonly addictive and creates risks for younger users. Social media is used by extremists in the Middle East and elsewhere to seek and brainwash recruits. And it exposes us and our friends to disagreeable spying. We may leave our lights on in the house when we are on vacation, but through social media we tell criminals exactly where we are, when we plan to return home, and how to blackmail(敲诈) us. Governments don’t need informers any more. Social media allows government agencies to spy on their own citizens. We record our thoughts, emotions, likes and dislikes on Facebook; we share our political views, social preferences, and plans. We post intimate photographs of ourselves. No spy agency or criminal organization could actively gather the type of data that we voluntarily post for them. The marketers are also seeing big opportunities. Amazon is trying to predict what we will order. Google is trying to judge our needs and wants based on our social-media profiles. We need to be aware of the risks and keep working to alleviate the dangers. Regardless of what social media people use, one thing is certain: we are in a period of accelerating change. The next decade will be even more amazing and unpredictable than the last. Just as no one could predict what would happen with social media in the last decade, no one can accurately predict where this technology will take us. I am optimistic, however, that a connected humanity will find a way to uplift itself.What was the purpose of Facebook when it was first created

A．To help students connect with the outside world.
B．To bring university students into closer contact.
C．To help students learn to live in a connected era.
D．To combine the world into an integral whole.

单项选择题

It is easy to miss amid the day-to-day headlines of global economic recession, but there is a less conspicuous kind of social upheaval (剧变) underway that is fast altering both the face of the planet and the way human beings live. That change is the rapid acceleration of urbanization. In 2008, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population was living in towns and cities. And as a recently published paper shows, the process of urbanization will only accelerate in the decades to come—with an enormous impact on biodiversity and potentially on climate change. As Karen Seto, the lead author of the paper, points out, the wave of urbanization isn’t just about the migration of people into urban environments, but about the environments themselves becoming bigger to accommodate all those people. The rapid expansion of urban areas will have a huge impact on biodiversity hotspots and on carbon emissions in those urban areas. Humans are the ultimate invasive species—when they move into new territory, they often displace the wildlife that was already living there. And as land is cleared for those new cities—especially in the dense tropical forests—carbon will be released into the atmosphere as well. It’s true that as people in developing nations move from the countryside to the city, the shift may reduce the pressure on land, which could in turn be good for the environment. This is especially so in desperately poor countries, where residents in the countryside slash and burn forests each growing season to clear, space for farming. But the real difference is that in developing nations, the move from rural areas to cities often leads to an accompanying increase in income—and that increase leads to an increase in the consumption of food and energy, which in turn causes a rise in carbon emissions. Getting enough to eat and enjoying the safety and comfort of living fully on the grid is certainly a good thing—but it does carry an environmental price. The urbanization wave can’t be stopped—and it shouldn’t be. But Seto’s paper does underscore the importance of managing that transition. If we do it the right way, we can reduce urbanization’s impact on the environment. "There’s an enormous opportunity here, and a lot of pressure and responsibility to think about how we urbanize," says Seto. One thing that’s clear is that we can’t build cities the way we have over the last couple of hundred years. The scale of this transition won’t allow that. We’re headed towards an urban planet no matter what, but whether it becomes heaven or hell is up to us.In what sense are humans the ultimate invasive species

A．They are much greedier than other species.
B．They are a unique species born to conquer.
C．They force other species out of their territories.
D．They have an urge to expand their living space.

单项选择题

Nothing succeeds in business books like the study of success. The current business-book boom was launched in 1982 by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman with In Search of Excellence. The trend has continued with a succession of experts and would-be experts who promise to distil the essence of excellence into three (or five or seven) simple rules. The Three Rules is a self-conscious contribution to this type of writing; it even includes a bibliography of "success studies". Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed work for a consultancy. Deloitte, that is determined to turn itself into more of a thought-leader and less a corporate repairman. They employ all the tricks of the success books. They insist that their conclusions are "measurable and actionable"—guides to behavior rather than analysis for its own sake. Success authors usually serve up vivid stories about how exceptional businesspeople stamped their personalities on a company or rescued it from a life-threatening crisis. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed are happier chewing the numbers: they provide detailed appendices on "calculating the elements of advantage" and "detailed analysis". The authors spent five years studying the behavior of their 344 " exceptional companies", only to come up at first with nothing. Every hunch(直觉) led to a blind alley and every hypothesis to a dead end. It was only when they shifted their attention from how companies behave to how they think that they began to make sense of their voluminous material. Management is all about making difficult tradeoffs in conditions that are always uncertain and often fast-changing. But exceptional companies approach these tradeoffs with two simple rules in mind, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. First: better before cheaper. Companies are more likely to succeed in the long run if they compete on quality or performance than on price. Second: revenue before cost. Companies have more to gain in the long run from driving up revenue than by driving down costs. Most success studies suffer from two faults. There is "the (光环) effect", whereby good performance leads commentators to attribute all manner of virtues to anything and everything the company does. These virtues then suddenly become vices when the company fails. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed work hard to avoid these mistakes by studying large bodies of data over several decades. But they end up embracing a different error: stating the obvious. Most businesspeople will not be surprised to learn that it is better to find a profitable niche(缝隙市场) and focus on boosting your revenues than to compete on price and cut your way to success. The difficult question is how to find that profitable niche and protect it. There, The Three Rules is less useful.How does The Three Rules differ from other success books according to the passage

A．It focuses on the behavior of exceptional businessmen.
B．It bases its detailed analysis on large amounts of data.
C．It offers practicable advice to businessmen.
D．It draws conclusions from vivid examples.

单项选择题

When Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched the facebook. com in Feb. 2004, even he could not imagine the forces it would let loose. His intent was to connect college students. Facebook, which is what this website rapidly evolved into, ended up connecting the world. To the children of this connected era, the world is one giant social network. They are not bound—as were previous generations of humans—by what they were taught. They are only limited by their curiosity and ambition. During my childhood, all knowledge was local. You learned everything you knew from your parents, teachers, preachers, and friends. With the high-quality and timely information at their fingertips, today’s children are rising above the fears and biases of their parents. Adults are also participating in this revolution. India’s normally tame middle class is speaking up against social ills. Silicon Valley executives are being shamed into adding women to their boards. Political leaders are marshalling the energy of millions for elections and political causes. All of this is being done with social media technologies that Facebook and its competitors set free. As does every advancing technology, social media has created many new problems. It is commonly addictive and creates risks for younger users. Social media is used by extremists in the Middle East and elsewhere to seek and brainwash recruits. And it exposes us and our friends to disagreeable spying. We may leave our lights on in the house when we are on vacation, but through social media we tell criminals exactly where we are, when we plan to return home, and how to blackmail(敲诈) us. Governments don’t need informers any more. Social media allows government agencies to spy on their own citizens. We record our thoughts, emotions, likes and dislikes on Facebook; we share our political views, social preferences, and plans. We post intimate photographs of ourselves. No spy agency or criminal organization could actively gather the type of data that we voluntarily post for them. The marketers are also seeing big opportunities. Amazon is trying to predict what we will order. Google is trying to judge our needs and wants based on our social-media profiles. We need to be aware of the risks and keep working to alleviate the dangers. Regardless of what social media people use, one thing is certain: we are in a period of accelerating change. The next decade will be even more amazing and unpredictable than the last. Just as no one could predict what would happen with social media in the last decade, no one can accurately predict where this technology will take us. I am optimistic, however, that a connected humanity will find a way to uplift itself.What difference does social media make to learning

A．Local knowledge and global knowledge will merge.
B．Students will become more curious and ambitious.
C．People are able to learn wherever they travel.
D．Sources of information are greatly expanded.

单项选择题

Until recently, the University of Kent prided itself on its friendly image. Not any more. Over the past few months it has been working hard, with the help of media consultants, to play down its cosy reputation in favour of something more academic and serious. Kent is not alone in considering an image revamp (翻新). Changes to next year’s funding regime are forcing universities to justify charging students up to ￡ 9,000 in fees. Nowadays universities are putting much more of a focus on their brands and what their value propositions are. While in the past universities have often focused on student social life and attractions of the university town in recruitment campaigns, they are now concentrating on more tangible (实在的) attractions, such as employment prospects, engagement with industry, and lecturer contact hours, making clear exactly what students are going to get for their money. The problem for universities is that if those benefits fail to materialise, students notice. That worries Rob Behrens, who deals with student complaints. "Universities need to be extremely careful in describing what’s going to happen to students," he says. "As competition is going to get greater for attracting gifted students, there is a danger that universities will go the extra mile." One university told prospective engineering students they would be able to design a car and race it at Brands Hatch, which never happened, he says. Others have promised use of sophisticated equipment that turned out to be broken or unavailable. "If universities spent as much money on handling complaints and appeals appropriately as they spend on marketing, they would do better at keeping students, and in the National Student Survey returns," he says. Ongoing research tracking prospective 2012 students suggests that they are not only becoming more sophisticated in thinking about what they want from a university, but are also spending more time researching evidence to back up institutional claims. Hence the growing importance of the student survey. From next September, all institutions will also be expected to publish on their websites key information sets, allowing easier comparison between institutions, between promises and reality, and the types of jobs and salaries graduates go on to. As a result, it is hardly surprising that universities are beginning to change the way they market themselves. While the best form of marketing for institutions is to be good at what they do, they also need to be clear about how they are different from others. And it is vital that once an institution claims to be particularly good at something, it must live up to it. The moment you position yourself, you become exposed, and if you fail in that you are in trouble.What does Rob Behrens suggest universities do in marketing themselves

A．Publicise the achievements of their graduates.
B．Go to extra lengths to cater to students’ needs.
C．Refrain from making promises they cannot honour.
D．Survey the expectations of their prospective students.

单项选择题

It is easy to miss amid the day-to-day headlines of global economic recession, but there is a less conspicuous kind of social upheaval (剧变) underway that is fast altering both the face of the planet and the way human beings live. That change is the rapid acceleration of urbanization. In 2008, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population was living in towns and cities. And as a recently published paper shows, the process of urbanization will only accelerate in the decades to come—with an enormous impact on biodiversity and potentially on climate change. As Karen Seto, the lead author of the paper, points out, the wave of urbanization isn’t just about the migration of people into urban environments, but about the environments themselves becoming bigger to accommodate all those people. The rapid expansion of urban areas will have a huge impact on biodiversity hotspots and on carbon emissions in those urban areas. Humans are the ultimate invasive species—when they move into new territory, they often displace the wildlife that was already living there. And as land is cleared for those new cities—especially in the dense tropical forests—carbon will be released into the atmosphere as well. It’s true that as people in developing nations move from the countryside to the city, the shift may reduce the pressure on land, which could in turn be good for the environment. This is especially so in desperately poor countries, where residents in the countryside slash and burn forests each growing season to clear, space for farming. But the real difference is that in developing nations, the move from rural areas to cities often leads to an accompanying increase in income—and that increase leads to an increase in the consumption of food and energy, which in turn causes a rise in carbon emissions. Getting enough to eat and enjoying the safety and comfort of living fully on the grid is certainly a good thing—but it does carry an environmental price. The urbanization wave can’t be stopped—and it shouldn’t be. But Seto’s paper does underscore the importance of managing that transition. If we do it the right way, we can reduce urbanization’s impact on the environment. "There’s an enormous opportunity here, and a lot of pressure and responsibility to think about how we urbanize," says Seto. One thing that’s clear is that we can’t build cities the way we have over the last couple of hundred years. The scale of this transition won’t allow that. We’re headed towards an urban planet no matter what, but whether it becomes heaven or hell is up to us.In what way is urbanization in poor countries good for the environment

A．More land will be preserved for wildlife.
B．The pressure on farmland will be lessened.
C．Carbon emissions will be considerably reduced.
D．Natural resources will be used more effectively.

单项选择题

Nothing succeeds in business books like the study of success. The current business-book boom was launched in 1982 by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman with In Search of Excellence. The trend has continued with a succession of experts and would-be experts who promise to distil the essence of excellence into three (or five or seven) simple rules. The Three Rules is a self-conscious contribution to this type of writing; it even includes a bibliography of "success studies". Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed work for a consultancy. Deloitte, that is determined to turn itself into more of a thought-leader and less a corporate repairman. They employ all the tricks of the success books. They insist that their conclusions are "measurable and actionable"—guides to behavior rather than analysis for its own sake. Success authors usually serve up vivid stories about how exceptional businesspeople stamped their personalities on a company or rescued it from a life-threatening crisis. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed are happier chewing the numbers: they provide detailed appendices on "calculating the elements of advantage" and "detailed analysis". The authors spent five years studying the behavior of their 344 " exceptional companies", only to come up at first with nothing. Every hunch(直觉) led to a blind alley and every hypothesis to a dead end. It was only when they shifted their attention from how companies behave to how they think that they began to make sense of their voluminous material. Management is all about making difficult tradeoffs in conditions that are always uncertain and often fast-changing. But exceptional companies approach these tradeoffs with two simple rules in mind, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. First: better before cheaper. Companies are more likely to succeed in the long run if they compete on quality or performance than on price. Second: revenue before cost. Companies have more to gain in the long run from driving up revenue than by driving down costs. Most success studies suffer from two faults. There is "the (光环) effect", whereby good performance leads commentators to attribute all manner of virtues to anything and everything the company does. These virtues then suddenly become vices when the company fails. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed work hard to avoid these mistakes by studying large bodies of data over several decades. But they end up embracing a different error: stating the obvious. Most businesspeople will not be surprised to learn that it is better to find a profitable niche(缝隙市场) and focus on boosting your revenues than to compete on price and cut your way to success. The difficult question is how to find that profitable niche and protect it. There, The Three Rules is less useful.What does the passage say contributes to the success of exceptional companies

A．Focus on quality and revenue.
B．Management and sales promotion.
C．Lower production costs and competitive prices.
D．Emphasis on after-sale service and maintenance.

单项选择题

Until recently, the University of Kent prided itself on its friendly image. Not any more. Over the past few months it has been working hard, with the help of media consultants, to play down its cosy reputation in favour of something more academic and serious. Kent is not alone in considering an image revamp (翻新). Changes to next year’s funding regime are forcing universities to justify charging students up to ￡ 9,000 in fees. Nowadays universities are putting much more of a focus on their brands and what their value propositions are. While in the past universities have often focused on student social life and attractions of the university town in recruitment campaigns, they are now concentrating on more tangible (实在的) attractions, such as employment prospects, engagement with industry, and lecturer contact hours, making clear exactly what students are going to get for their money. The problem for universities is that if those benefits fail to materialise, students notice. That worries Rob Behrens, who deals with student complaints. "Universities need to be extremely careful in describing what’s going to happen to students," he says. "As competition is going to get greater for attracting gifted students, there is a danger that universities will go the extra mile." One university told prospective engineering students they would be able to design a car and race it at Brands Hatch, which never happened, he says. Others have promised use of sophisticated equipment that turned out to be broken or unavailable. "If universities spent as much money on handling complaints and appeals appropriately as they spend on marketing, they would do better at keeping students, and in the National Student Survey returns," he says. Ongoing research tracking prospective 2012 students suggests that they are not only becoming more sophisticated in thinking about what they want from a university, but are also spending more time researching evidence to back up institutional claims. Hence the growing importance of the student survey. From next September, all institutions will also be expected to publish on their websites key information sets, allowing easier comparison between institutions, between promises and reality, and the types of jobs and salaries graduates go on to. As a result, it is hardly surprising that universities are beginning to change the way they market themselves. While the best form of marketing for institutions is to be good at what they do, they also need to be clear about how they are different from others. And it is vital that once an institution claims to be particularly good at something, it must live up to it. The moment you position yourself, you become exposed, and if you fail in that you are in trouble.What is students’ chief consideration in choosing a university

A．Whether it promises the best job prospects.
B．Whether it is able to deliver what they want.
C．Whether it ranks high among similar institutions.
D．Whether it offers opportunities for practical training.

单项选择题

When Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched the facebook. com in Feb. 2004, even he could not imagine the forces it would let loose. His intent was to connect college students. Facebook, which is what this website rapidly evolved into, ended up connecting the world. To the children of this connected era, the world is one giant social network. They are not bound—as were previous generations of humans—by what they were taught. They are only limited by their curiosity and ambition. During my childhood, all knowledge was local. You learned everything you knew from your parents, teachers, preachers, and friends. With the high-quality and timely information at their fingertips, today’s children are rising above the fears and biases of their parents. Adults are also participating in this revolution. India’s normally tame middle class is speaking up against social ills. Silicon Valley executives are being shamed into adding women to their boards. Political leaders are marshalling the energy of millions for elections and political causes. All of this is being done with social media technologies that Facebook and its competitors set free. As does every advancing technology, social media has created many new problems. It is commonly addictive and creates risks for younger users. Social media is used by extremists in the Middle East and elsewhere to seek and brainwash recruits. And it exposes us and our friends to disagreeable spying. We may leave our lights on in the house when we are on vacation, but through social media we tell criminals exactly where we are, when we plan to return home, and how to blackmail(敲诈) us. Governments don’t need informers any more. Social media allows government agencies to spy on their own citizens. We record our thoughts, emotions, likes and dislikes on Facebook; we share our political views, social preferences, and plans. We post intimate photographs of ourselves. No spy agency or criminal organization could actively gather the type of data that we voluntarily post for them. The marketers are also seeing big opportunities. Amazon is trying to predict what we will order. Google is trying to judge our needs and wants based on our social-media profiles. We need to be aware of the risks and keep working to alleviate the dangers. Regardless of what social media people use, one thing is certain: we are in a period of accelerating change. The next decade will be even more amazing and unpredictable than the last. Just as no one could predict what would happen with social media in the last decade, no one can accurately predict where this technology will take us. I am optimistic, however, that a connected humanity will find a way to uplift itself.What is the author’s greatest concern with social media technology

A．Individuals and organizations may use it for evil purposes.
B．Government will find it hard to protect classified information.
C．People may disclose their friends’ information unintentionally.
D．People’s attention will be easily distracted from their work in hand.

单项选择题

It is easy to miss amid the day-to-day headlines of global economic recession, but there is a less conspicuous kind of social upheaval (剧变) underway that is fast altering both the face of the planet and the way human beings live. That change is the rapid acceleration of urbanization. In 2008, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population was living in towns and cities. And as a recently published paper shows, the process of urbanization will only accelerate in the decades to come—with an enormous impact on biodiversity and potentially on climate change. As Karen Seto, the lead author of the paper, points out, the wave of urbanization isn’t just about the migration of people into urban environments, but about the environments themselves becoming bigger to accommodate all those people. The rapid expansion of urban areas will have a huge impact on biodiversity hotspots and on carbon emissions in those urban areas. Humans are the ultimate invasive species—when they move into new territory, they often displace the wildlife that was already living there. And as land is cleared for those new cities—especially in the dense tropical forests—carbon will be released into the atmosphere as well. It’s true that as people in developing nations move from the countryside to the city, the shift may reduce the pressure on land, which could in turn be good for the environment. This is especially so in desperately poor countries, where residents in the countryside slash and burn forests each growing season to clear, space for farming. But the real difference is that in developing nations, the move from rural areas to cities often leads to an accompanying increase in income—and that increase leads to an increase in the consumption of food and energy, which in turn causes a rise in carbon emissions. Getting enough to eat and enjoying the safety and comfort of living fully on the grid is certainly a good thing—but it does carry an environmental price. The urbanization wave can’t be stopped—and it shouldn’t be. But Seto’s paper does underscore the importance of managing that transition. If we do it the right way, we can reduce urbanization’s impact on the environment. "There’s an enormous opportunity here, and a lot of pressure and responsibility to think about how we urbanize," says Seto. One thing that’s clear is that we can’t build cities the way we have over the last couple of hundred years. The scale of this transition won’t allow that. We’re headed towards an urban planet no matter what, but whether it becomes heaven or hell is up to us.What does the author say about living comfortably in the city

A．It incurs a high environmental price.
B．It brings poverty and insecurity to an end.
C．It causes a big change in people’s lifestyle.
D．It narrows the gap between city and country.

单项选择题

Nothing succeeds in business books like the study of success. The current business-book boom was launched in 1982 by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman with In Search of Excellence. The trend has continued with a succession of experts and would-be experts who promise to distil the essence of excellence into three (or five or seven) simple rules. The Three Rules is a self-conscious contribution to this type of writing; it even includes a bibliography of "success studies". Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed work for a consultancy. Deloitte, that is determined to turn itself into more of a thought-leader and less a corporate repairman. They employ all the tricks of the success books. They insist that their conclusions are "measurable and actionable"—guides to behavior rather than analysis for its own sake. Success authors usually serve up vivid stories about how exceptional businesspeople stamped their personalities on a company or rescued it from a life-threatening crisis. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed are happier chewing the numbers: they provide detailed appendices on "calculating the elements of advantage" and "detailed analysis". The authors spent five years studying the behavior of their 344 " exceptional companies", only to come up at first with nothing. Every hunch(直觉) led to a blind alley and every hypothesis to a dead end. It was only when they shifted their attention from how companies behave to how they think that they began to make sense of their voluminous material. Management is all about making difficult tradeoffs in conditions that are always uncertain and often fast-changing. But exceptional companies approach these tradeoffs with two simple rules in mind, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. First: better before cheaper. Companies are more likely to succeed in the long run if they compete on quality or performance than on price. Second: revenue before cost. Companies have more to gain in the long run from driving up revenue than by driving down costs. Most success studies suffer from two faults. There is "the (光环) effect", whereby good performance leads commentators to attribute all manner of virtues to anything and everything the company does. These virtues then suddenly become vices when the company fails. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed work hard to avoid these mistakes by studying large bodies of data over several decades. But they end up embracing a different error: stating the obvious. Most businesspeople will not be surprised to learn that it is better to find a profitable niche(缝隙市场) and focus on boosting your revenues than to compete on price and cut your way to success. The difficult question is how to find that profitable niche and protect it. There, The Three Rules is less useful.What is the author’s comment on The Three Rules？

A．It can help to locate profitable niches.
B．It has little to offer to businesspeople.
C．It is noted for its detailed data analysis.
D．It fails to identify the keys to success.

单项选择题

When Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched the facebook. com in Feb. 2004, even he could not imagine the forces it would let loose. His intent was to connect college students. Facebook, which is what this website rapidly evolved into, ended up connecting the world. To the children of this connected era, the world is one giant social network. They are not bound—as were previous generations of humans—by what they were taught. They are only limited by their curiosity and ambition. During my childhood, all knowledge was local. You learned everything you knew from your parents, teachers, preachers, and friends. With the high-quality and timely information at their fingertips, today’s children are rising above the fears and biases of their parents. Adults are also participating in this revolution. India’s normally tame middle class is speaking up against social ills. Silicon Valley executives are being shamed into adding women to their boards. Political leaders are marshalling the energy of millions for elections and political causes. All of this is being done with social media technologies that Facebook and its competitors set free. As does every advancing technology, social media has created many new problems. It is commonly addictive and creates risks for younger users. Social media is used by extremists in the Middle East and elsewhere to seek and brainwash recruits. And it exposes us and our friends to disagreeable spying. We may leave our lights on in the house when we are on vacation, but through social media we tell criminals exactly where we are, when we plan to return home, and how to blackmail(敲诈) us. Governments don’t need informers any more. Social media allows government agencies to spy on their own citizens. We record our thoughts, emotions, likes and dislikes on Facebook; we share our political views, social preferences, and plans. We post intimate photographs of ourselves. No spy agency or criminal organization could actively gather the type of data that we voluntarily post for them. The marketers are also seeing big opportunities. Amazon is trying to predict what we will order. Google is trying to judge our needs and wants based on our social-media profiles. We need to be aware of the risks and keep working to alleviate the dangers. Regardless of what social media people use, one thing is certain: we are in a period of accelerating change. The next decade will be even more amazing and unpredictable than the last. Just as no one could predict what would happen with social media in the last decade, no one can accurately predict where this technology will take us. I am optimistic, however, that a connected humanity will find a way to uplift itself.What do businesses use social media for

A．Creating a good corporate image.
B．Anticipating the needs of customers.
C．Conducting large-scale market surveys.
D．Minimizing possible risks and dangers.

单项选择题

Until recently, the University of Kent prided itself on its friendly image. Not any more. Over the past few months it has been working hard, with the help of media consultants, to play down its cosy reputation in favour of something more academic and serious. Kent is not alone in considering an image revamp (翻新). Changes to next year’s funding regime are forcing universities to justify charging students up to ￡ 9,000 in fees. Nowadays universities are putting much more of a focus on their brands and what their value propositions are. While in the past universities have often focused on student social life and attractions of the university town in recruitment campaigns, they are now concentrating on more tangible (实在的) attractions, such as employment prospects, engagement with industry, and lecturer contact hours, making clear exactly what students are going to get for their money. The problem for universities is that if those benefits fail to materialise, students notice. That worries Rob Behrens, who deals with student complaints. "Universities need to be extremely careful in describing what’s going to happen to students," he says. "As competition is going to get greater for attracting gifted students, there is a danger that universities will go the extra mile." One university told prospective engineering students they would be able to design a car and race it at Brands Hatch, which never happened, he says. Others have promised use of sophisticated equipment that turned out to be broken or unavailable. "If universities spent as much money on handling complaints and appeals appropriately as they spend on marketing, they would do better at keeping students, and in the National Student Survey returns," he says. Ongoing research tracking prospective 2012 students suggests that they are not only becoming more sophisticated in thinking about what they want from a university, but are also spending more time researching evidence to back up institutional claims. Hence the growing importance of the student survey. From next September, all institutions will also be expected to publish on their websites key information sets, allowing easier comparison between institutions, between promises and reality, and the types of jobs and salaries graduates go on to. As a result, it is hardly surprising that universities are beginning to change the way they market themselves. While the best form of marketing for institutions is to be good at what they do, they also need to be clear about how they are different from others. And it is vital that once an institution claims to be particularly good at something, it must live up to it. The moment you position yourself, you become exposed, and if you fail in that you are in trouble.What must universities show to win recruitment campaigns

A．They are positioned to meet the future needs of society.
B．They are responsible to students for their growth.
C．They are ever ready to improve themselves.
D．They are unique one way or another.

单项选择题

It is easy to miss amid the day-to-day headlines of global economic recession, but there is a less conspicuous kind of social upheaval (剧变) underway that is fast altering both the face of the planet and the way human beings live. That change is the rapid acceleration of urbanization. In 2008, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population was living in towns and cities. And as a recently published paper shows, the process of urbanization will only accelerate in the decades to come—with an enormous impact on biodiversity and potentially on climate change. As Karen Seto, the lead author of the paper, points out, the wave of urbanization isn’t just about the migration of people into urban environments, but about the environments themselves becoming bigger to accommodate all those people. The rapid expansion of urban areas will have a huge impact on biodiversity hotspots and on carbon emissions in those urban areas. Humans are the ultimate invasive species—when they move into new territory, they often displace the wildlife that was already living there. And as land is cleared for those new cities—especially in the dense tropical forests—carbon will be released into the atmosphere as well. It’s true that as people in developing nations move from the countryside to the city, the shift may reduce the pressure on land, which could in turn be good for the environment. This is especially so in desperately poor countries, where residents in the countryside slash and burn forests each growing season to clear, space for farming. But the real difference is that in developing nations, the move from rural areas to cities often leads to an accompanying increase in income—and that increase leads to an increase in the consumption of food and energy, which in turn causes a rise in carbon emissions. Getting enough to eat and enjoying the safety and comfort of living fully on the grid is certainly a good thing—but it does carry an environmental price. The urbanization wave can’t be stopped—and it shouldn’t be. But Seto’s paper does underscore the importance of managing that transition. If we do it the right way, we can reduce urbanization’s impact on the environment. "There’s an enormous opportunity here, and a lot of pressure and responsibility to think about how we urbanize," says Seto. One thing that’s clear is that we can’t build cities the way we have over the last couple of hundred years. The scale of this transition won’t allow that. We’re headed towards an urban planet no matter what, but whether it becomes heaven or hell is up to us.What can be done to minimize the negative impact of urbanization according to Seto

A．Slowing down the speed of transition.
B．Innovative use of advanced technology.
C．Appropriate management of the process.
D．Enhancing people’s sense of responsibility.

单项选择题

When Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched the facebook. com in Feb. 2004, even he could not imagine the forces it would let loose. His intent was to connect college students. Facebook, which is what this website rapidly evolved into, ended up connecting the world. To the children of this connected era, the world is one giant social network. They are not bound—as were previous generations of humans—by what they were taught. They are only limited by their curiosity and ambition. During my childhood, all knowledge was local. You learned everything you knew from your parents, teachers, preachers, and friends. With the high-quality and timely information at their fingertips, today’s children are rising above the fears and biases of their parents. Adults are also participating in this revolution. India’s normally tame middle class is speaking up against social ills. Silicon Valley executives are being shamed into adding women to their boards. Political leaders are marshalling the energy of millions for elections and political causes. All of this is being done with social media technologies that Facebook and its competitors set free. As does every advancing technology, social media has created many new problems. It is commonly addictive and creates risks for younger users. Social media is used by extremists in the Middle East and elsewhere to seek and brainwash recruits. And it exposes us and our friends to disagreeable spying. We may leave our lights on in the house when we are on vacation, but through social media we tell criminals exactly where we are, when we plan to return home, and how to blackmail(敲诈) us. Governments don’t need informers any more. Social media allows government agencies to spy on their own citizens. We record our thoughts, emotions, likes and dislikes on Facebook; we share our political views, social preferences, and plans. We post intimate photographs of ourselves. No spy agency or criminal organization could actively gather the type of data that we voluntarily post for them. The marketers are also seeing big opportunities. Amazon is trying to predict what we will order. Google is trying to judge our needs and wants based on our social-media profiles. We need to be aware of the risks and keep working to alleviate the dangers. Regardless of what social media people use, one thing is certain: we are in a period of accelerating change. The next decade will be even more amazing and unpredictable than the last. Just as no one could predict what would happen with social media in the last decade, no one can accurately predict where this technology will take us. I am optimistic, however, that a connected humanity will find a way to uplift itself.What does the author think of social media as a whole

A．It will enable human society to advance at a faster pace.
B．It will pose a grave threat to our traditional ways of life.
C．It is bound to bring about another information revolution.
D．It breaks down the final barriers in human communication.

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