英语六级阅读练习：女博士人数

　　For the first time, more women than men in the United States received doctoral degrees last year, the culmination of decades of change in the status of women at colleges nationwide.

　　culmination n. 顶点;高潮

　　The number of women at every level of academia has been rising for decades. Women now hold a nearly 3-to-2 majority in undergraduate and graduate education. Doctoral study was the last holdout - the only remaining area of higher education that still had an enduring male majority.

　　Of the doctoral degrees awarded in the 2008-09 academic year, 28,962 went to women and 28,469 to men, according to an annual enrollment report from the Council of Graduate Schools, based in Washington.

　　Doctoral degrees, which require an average of seven years study, are typically the last to show the impact of long-term changes. It is a trend that has been snaking its way through the educational pipeline, said Nathan Bell, the reports author and the director of research and policy analysis for the council. It was bound to happen.

　　pipeline n. 管道;输油管;传递途径

　　be bound to 注定;必然;一定要

　　Women have long outnumbered men in earning masters degrees, especially in education. Women earned nearly six in 10 graduate degrees in 2008-09, according to the new report, which is based on an annual survey of graduate institutions.

　　outnumber vt. 数目超过;比多

　　But women who aspired to become college professors, a common path for those with doctorates, were hindered by the particular demands of faculty life. Studies have found that the tenure clock often collides with the biological clock: The busiest years of the academic career are the years that well-educated women tend to have children.

　　aspire vi. 渴望;立志;追求

　　hinder vi. 成为阻碍 vt. 阻碍;打扰 adj. 后面的

　　collide with 冲突;碰撞

　　Many women feel they have to choose between having a career in academics and having a family, said Catherine Hill, director of research at the American Association of University Women. Of course, they shouldnt have to.

　　Undergraduate women began reaching parity with men in the early 1980s as societal barriers to female scholarship fell away. And then they eclipsed men - so thoroughly that federal officials are now investigating whether some liberal arts schools are favoring men in admissions to preserve some semblance of gender balance.