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 business 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.
2. 在irrespective和fluctuations之间加上介词of。irrespectiveOf是一固定用法，意指“不论，不管，不顾，”等，如：irrespectiveOfthecost不惜工本，irrespective of the consequences不顾后果，irrespective of duty status不论职位高低。此处指公司不顾收入的波动变化。
5．把定冠词the去掉。定冠词与一名词连用，表示某个或某些特定的人或物或机构等，而此处的in the school，一则意思不清，二则可能指在某人正在某个具体学校做某事。这一层意思与本文上下文不相吻合。比较之下，inschool是一固定说法，表示“在上学或求学”、“在校读书”正符合本文上下文的意思。因此应把定冠词去掉。
7．在ways和which之间加上一个介词in。在ways和which之间加上一个介词in，表示intheseways，即指通过前面提到的这些方法。相似的句子较多，如：Not all sounds made by animals serve as language，and we have only to turn to that extra ordinary discovery of echo-location in bats to see a case in which the voice plays a strictly utilitarian role．(动物发出的声音并不是都能当作语言，因此我们只好求助于蝙蝠回声定位的这种非凡的发展，探究一下语音在何种情况下起着绝对有用的作用。)
8．这里应该用动词的—lng形式，即eliminating，以便使句型结构与前面的giving(students a governance role)保持一致，否则句子结构和意思都显得不正确。
10．将to give discounts on改为to give discounts to their best customer。意为实业公司给最好的客户提供优惠。而give discount on something则指就某一商品打折扣，显然与本文的上下文是相悖的。因为本文一直在讨论就如何避免为抢最好的生源而展开恶性竞争，为抢好学生捉供优厚奖学金，与公司为抢客源，给最好的客户提供优惠道理是一样的。所以应做上述改动。