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　　2019考研英语考试已经结束，以下是考研英语一阅读理解题，仅供大家参考。

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　　Financial regulators in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of bigbanks.Starting next year,any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing.The main purpose of this

　　"clawback" rule is to hold bankers accountable for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institutions.Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit:more long-term decision making,not only by banks but by all corporations,to build a stronger economy for future generations.

　　"Short-termism, or the desire for quick profits,has worsened in publicly traded companies,says the Bank of England' s top economist,Andrew Haldane.He quotes agiant of classical economics,Alfred Marshall,in describing this financial impatience asacting like "children who pick the plums out of their pudding to eat them at once" rather than putting them aside to be eaten last.

　　The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain,he notes,has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades.Transient investors,who demand high quarterly profits from companies,can hinder a firm' s efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty.This has been dubbed"quarterly capitalism."

　　In addition,new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities,quicker use of information at the speed of Twitter,and thus shorter attention spans infinancial markets. "There seems to be a predominance of short-term thinking at the

　　expense of long-term investing," said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in a speech this week.

　　In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to defer

　　performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year,slightly helping reduce

　　"short-termism." In its latest survey of CEO pay,The Wall Street Journal finds that"a substantial part" of executive pay is now tied to performance.

　　Much more could be done to encourage"long-termism," such as changes in the taxcode and quicker disclosure of stock acquisitions.In France,shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company.

　　Within companies,the right compensation design can provide incentives for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all stakeholders. Britain' s new rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interestin their performance,not just for the short term but for the long term.

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　　Over the course of the past three decades,the A has become the most commongrade given out on American college campuses.In 2015,42 percent of grades weretop marks,compared to 31 percent in 1988.

　　This trend of grade inflation-the gradual increase in average GPAs over the pastfew decades-is often considered a product of a consumer era in higher education,in which students are treated like customers to be pleased.But another,related force-apolicy often buried deep in course catalogs called "grade forgiveness" -is helping raise grade-point averages.Different schools' policies can work in slightly differentways,but in general,grade forgiveness allows students to retake a course in which they received a low grade,and the most recent grade or the highest grade is the only one that counts in calculating a student' s overall GPA.(Both grades still appear on the student' s transcript.)

　　The use of this little-known practice has accelerated in recent years,as colleges continue to do their utmost to keep students in school(and paying tuition) and improve their graduation rates. According to a forthcoming survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, a trade group, some 91percent of undergraduate colleges and 80 percent of graduate and professional

　　schools permit students to repeat courses to improve a grade.When this practice first started decades ago,it was usually limited to freshmen,to give them a second chanceto take a class in their first year if they struggled in their transition to college-level courses.But now most colleges, save for many selective campuses,allow all undergraduates,and even graduate students,to get their low grades forgiven.

　　The rise of grade forgiveness scans as yet another instance of colleges treatingstudents as customers to be satisfied-similar to campus amenities such as luxuriousdorms,palatial recreational facilities,and cornucopian dining halls.Indeed,there seems to be demand for do-overs. "Students are asking for it," said Jack Miner,OhioState University' s registrar and executive director of enrollment services. "We' re attracting and retaining stronger students and there' s more competition to get intomajors and graduate schools,and a small change in their GPA can help."

　　Ohio State expanded its grade-forgiveness policy three years ago to cover all undergraduates instead of just freshmen. Miner says that about 4,500 students-roughly 10 percent of Ohio State's undergraduate population-take advantage of the policy in any given year. Most students see their grades rise in the second attempt,usually a full letter grade or a full letter and a half,Miner said. Still, about 15 percent of

　　students who receive a failing grade in the first attempt have the same outcome in thesecond. "That' s a wake-up call for those students that maybe they need to reconsider their major," Miner,said.

　　Miner is generally optimistic about the promise of grade forgiveness,but othersare concerned about what it could do to academic dynamics. "It teaches students thattheir work in a course doesn't matter because there's always another chance," said Jonathan Marx,a professor of sociology at Winthrop University,in South Carolina.

　　Marx and his colleague David Meeler,an associate professor of philosophy,have studied grade-forgiveness programs at eight public institutions in an unnamed southern state.What they found in a study published in 2013 is that 5 percent of theseniors they polled at one of the institutions used grade-forgiveness policies to keepanywhere from a quarter to half of all of their coursework from counting toward theirGPA.One student highlighted in the study repeated five different courses for better grades,including a math class in which she was eventually able to raise her grade froma D to an A-minus.

　　"Everyone knows about grade inflation,but this is GPA distortion,and few peoplelooking at a student' s GPA know it happens," Meeler said.He and Marx told me they have nothing against giving students second chances,but their issue is with the colleges that,say, allow a student to repeat five courses as they please. "Institutionsare allowing students to manage their grades to get the highest reward," Meeler said,as opposed to requiring students to work with faculty members to master the material.

　　At the University of Colorado Boulder,such concerns led faculty members to eliminate grade forgiveness in 2010. Professors at the time were worried about the fairness of the policy-they noticed that students in some majors were using it more than those in others,and that a freshman-oriented rule was being used regularly by upperclassmen. But now,as other colleges adopt or expand such policies,Colorado is considering reinstating the practice. "We' re weighing how to foster student success to help them achieve their goals," said Kristi Wold-McCormick,the university' sregistrar. "We are not trying to alter academic history.It gives the student a chance to tell their story,about how they overcame a mistake or a struggle."

　　College officials also tend to emphasize that the goal of grade forgiveness is lessabout the grade itself and more about encouraging students to retake courses criticalto their degree program and graduation without incurring a big penalty. "UItimately,"Ohio State's Miner said, "we see students achieve more success because they retake a course and do better in subsequent courses or master the content that allows them to graduate on time."

　　That said,there is a way in which grade forgiveness satisfies colleges' own needsas well.For public institutions,state appropriations are sometimes tied partly to theirsuccess on metrics such as graduation rates and student retention-so better grades can,by boosting figures like those,mean more money.And anything that raises GPAs will likely make students-who,at the end of the day,are paying the bill-feel they' ve gotten a better value for their tuition dollars,which is another big concernfor colleges.

　　Indeed,grade forgiveness is just another way that universities are responding to consumers' expectations for higher education. Since students and parents expect a college degree to lead to a job, it is in the best interest of a school to churn out graduates who are as qualified as possible-or at least appear to be. On this,students'and colleges' incentives seem to be aligned.