Better Ways To Pay For College # Reading Section

SECTION THREE                                        QUESTIONS 28-40

The reading passage below describes some of the better ways to pay for the college. From the information given, answer the questions 28-40.

[A]HARD as it may be to believe with Donald Trump hogging the headlines, America’s presidential primary campaigns are proposing serious ideas for how to deal with real economic problems. High among them is how to fix the country’s broken system of university finance. Hillary Clinton has come up with intriguing plans, but the ideas of Marco Rubio are the more radical. And radicalism is what the system badly needs.
America is home to the world’s best universities. But taken as a whole, its higher-education system is marred by soaring costs, stratospheric student debt and patchy performance. Tuition fees have doubled in real terms in the past 20 years. Student debt has trebled in the past decade, to $1.2 trillion. A recent study of academic achievement at college found that 45% of America’s students made no discernible academic progress in their first two years. Sorting out this mess demands three things: reforms that bear down on costs, that encourage students to make more informed choices about their future and that match repayments to borrowers’ ability to pay.
[B] Mrs Clinton’s plan meets the third of those aims, and nods at the first. She proposes capping the repayment of college loans at a maximum of 10% of income over 20 years. If a loan is not paid off by then the government will pick up the tab. The estimated bill for her scheme, which would push America further towards a model used in Britain and Australia, comes to $350 billion over ten years. Income-based loan repayments make sense. But if government still picks up the tab for defaults, there is little pressure on colleges to curb costs and students to choose wisely. Mrs Clinton’s answer is to make subsidies to colleges contingent on reducing costs.
[C] Mr Rubio deals with the three reform priorities more comprehensively. He wants to encourage the take-up of online education platforms to curb costs and has good ideas for how to spread information on the earnings associated with particular degrees. But his boldest proposal is to link repayment of university funding to income by using equity financing, an idea floated by Milton Friedman in 1955.

[D]Under Mr Rubio’s plan, private investors would pay for a student’s education in return for a claim on a chunk of his future earnings. Just as dividends accruing to a shareholder depend on a firm’s profits, so a student’s subsequent payments to the investor would rise and fall with his income. Equity financing would lead to more informed choices because investors would be less willing to fund courses and colleges that offer low returns. And it would squeeze costs because unpopular courses would have to trim their spending.
The logic is impeccable. Nonetheless, the idea of equity financing for college is controversial. There are silly criticisms, for instance that any equity contract on human capital is tantamount to indentured servitude. In fact, these contracts would be less constraining than a student loan that imposes fixed payment obligations and cannot be discharged in America’s bankruptcy courts. It is possible—and sensible—to set caps on the period in which income is shared, the percentage of earnings that can be given away and the total amount paid out.
Marco to market
[E]The more substantive problems involve information asymmetries and moral hazard. Prospective students know better than any investor what they plan to do with their lives. A lawyer who financed his study by issuing equity could, on graduating, afford to choose whether to join a well-paying law firm or to become a public defender without having that decision influenced by the need to repay a mound of debt. From society’s point of view, that freedom to choose has benefits: a debt-laden graduate is less likely to take a risk on setting up a new company and more likely to head for Wall Street instead. But from the investor’s perspective, the risk that students might offer low returns would need to be compensated for by other students pursuing more remunerative paths.
[F]People who think they will do well in later life also have an incentive to opt for the certainty of fixed debt repayments rather than face the possibility of handing over big chunks of future income. Again, there are potential solutions: some fintech startups have experimented with models of future income that enable students with better earnings potential to give up a smaller share of income in return for the same amount of funding as those with dimmer prospects.
[G]Resolving these difficulties will take time and ingenuity. And whatever happens, it makes sense to have a combination of debt and equity, and of private and public money, in the mix. That’s why Mrs Clinton’s proposals are a sensible start, but Mr Rubio’s ideas are worth serious debate.

Questions 28-34

Reading passage 5 has seven sections, A-G

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 28-40 on your answer sheet.

28.  Choice must lie with the student

29. solutions to fiscal concerns

30. Higher pays in later years makes the difference

31. Promotion of online education takes place

32. War between Rubio and Clinton ideas.

33. America on the way of Australia

34. Independent lenders pay the loan

Questions 35-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in reading passage 5?

In boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE             if the statement agrees with the information.

FALSE           if the statement contradicts with the information.

NOT GIVEN  if there is no information on this.

35. The American higher education often involves high student debts.

36. Mr. Rubio’s plans are similar to the ones in Australia and Britain.

37. Online education has come up as a solution to debts.

38. Hilary Clinton suggests individual investors to pay the students loans.

39. Investors if invest, take away the freedom to choose from students.

40. A debate between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton is about to happen.

ANSWERS

28. E

29. A

30. F

31. C

32. G

33. B

34. D

35. True

36. False

37. True

38. False

39. True

40. Not given

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Related To Travel # Speaking Section

Travel is something most of the people prefer to do. And it also is one of the most common questions asked in IELTS. This topic usually comes in the PART I of the speaking section. Now, it might be possible that you do not travel a lot or may be you do not like it much, but it is not possible that you haven’t ever traveled in your life. So, when asked about it, don’t say that O! travel, I don’t like it much. Try to be more positive and answer in a way that neither sounds fake nor a lie.

Given below are some of the questions that could be asked in PART I of the speaking section.

1. Do you think that travel broadens the mind?

I think yes. Going to new places and visiting new people, surely opens a new perspective of things. You get to know different opinions, may be different from yours, see new places and find out the order of doing things, that is different from yours. This allows not only to understand other cultures but also makes us more familiar with our own culture.

2. Do you think young and old people benefit from travelling together?

Well, we are living in one of the most competitive times and we all are busy. It so happens that we don’t get time to spend with the old members of our family. Travelling with them, surely rejuvenates us and also helps us to know them better. The elder generation surely more experiences and interesting stories to tell, the younger ones have new ways of doing things. Exchanging opinions with each other while travelling, helps in creating stronger bonds and even helps in taking a break from the rush we are living.

3. How do you travel to school or college?

Well, there are different means of transports available I usually prefer my college bus to travel to college. It is fast and cheap and even more I get to travel with my friends and also make some new.

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Greece Elections # Reading Passage

SECTION TWO                                    QUESTIONS 15-22

Read the passage below and answer Questions 15-22 on the following page

On the very day that Greece received the first tranche of its new bailout from the European Union, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has decided to resign and call a general election, which will be held next month. Until then, the country will be led by a woman, Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou, the president of Greece’s Supreme Court. On the face of it, Tsipras’s move seems premature. In the next few months, his government has much to do in order to meet the terms of the bailout and persuade its creditors to consider giving Greece some much needed debt relief. The election will complicate that timetable and will, inevitably, create more uncertainty about where the country is going. But, despite the risks it involves, Tsipras’s gambit was necessary for broader democratic and political reasons. When Tsipras did a U-turn last month and accepted the harsh bailout terms imposed by Germany, he created a big split in his Syriza party, which took office in January. About a third of Syriza’s members of parliament voted against the deal or abstained. Since then, the government has been ruling with the support of its coalition partner, a right-wing populist party called Independent Greeks. But Tsipras was facing a likely parliamentary vote of no confidence, which he wasn’t certain to survive, and a formal schism with anti-bailout members of Syriza, who have been talking about setting up their own party. Rather than engaging his internal opposition, the Prime Minister has chosen to try and outflank them by calling a snap election, which he hopes will bestow him with a new mandate.

That is probably a smart move, and it will also give the Greek public an opportunity to register their feelings, once again, about the bailout package and its attendant continuation of austerity policies. When last consulted, in the “Oxi” referendum, on July 5th, the voters overwhelmingly rejected the bailout terms being demanded by the E.U. and the International Monetary Fund, only for Tsipras and his colleagues to accept a similar deal a couple of weeks later, under threat of Greece being ejected from the eurozone. The upcoming election will effectively be a referendum on Tsipras’s decision to accept more austerity and more international supervision of Greece’s economy. “The political landscape must clear up,” the energy minister Panos Skourletis, an ally of Tsipras, said on Thursday. “We need to know whether the government has or does not have a majority.”

Since Greece is a very divided country, an outright majority for Syriza is an unlikely outcome. In its January triumph, which left it as the largest party in parliament, it won just thirty-six per cent of the vote. This time around, at least some of Syriza’s supporters are likely to support its dissident faction, which is led by the former energy minister, Panagiotis Lafazanis, who last week accused Tsipras of giving into an E.U. “dictatorship” and called for the creation of a new “united movement that will justify people’s desire for democracy and social justice.” It seems as though Lafazanis and his colleagues will campaign on the idea of taking Greece out of the eurozone and restoring the drachma, which, at least in theory, would give the government the leeway to pursue more expansionary monetary and fiscal policies.

This is a political debate Greece needs to have. For the past six months, some of Syriza’s supporters have been suffering from a form of cognitive dissonance. Perfectly understandably, they want an end to austerity policies; but they also want Greece to stay in the eurozone. If the dramatic showdown between Syriza and the country’s creditors demonstrated anything, it is that Greece and other E.U. debtor countries cannot have both of these things. Germany, with the support of the Benelux countries and many of the newer E.U. members from Eastern Europe, won’t allow it. In seeking reëlection, Tsipras, who, according to recent opinion polls, still retains a lot of popular support, will argue that he got the best deal possible. That’s what he did in his address to the nation on Thursday night.

It is now up to the critics of austerity, including Lafazanis and possibly even Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister whom my colleague Ian Parker profiled recently, to make the argument that an alternative set of policies, including a new Greek currency, is viable. If they proceed down this road, emphasizing the practicality of their program rather than simply criticizing Tsipras for capitulating, the election campaign could be interesting.

QUESTIONS 15-22

Do the following statements agree with the information in the passage?

In boxes 15-22 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                    if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE                  if the statement contradicts  the information

NOT GIVEN         if the information is not given in the passage

15. Greece will be led by a woman prime minister because the current one died.

16. The government of Tsipras was facing internal issues, however it managed to survive because of people’s support.

17. The demands of the bailout were rejected by everyone in Greece and has yet not been accepted.

18. Syrzia won a majority in the January elections.

19. Lafazanis are taking steps to take Greece out of euro zone, expecting to gain some monetary issues.

20. The debate proved that Germany won’t allow EU country that own money to have all the benefits.

21. The finance minister of Greece at present is Yanis Varoufakis.

22. The main task of the former finance minister is make alternative policies.

 

ANSWER

15. False

16.False

17.False

18. True

19. True

20. True

21. True

22. True

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Related To Hobbies # Speaking Section

Hobby is something done by an individual during their leisure time. So, yet again this is something related to you and is asked in the Part I of the speaking section. Although it is assumed that hobby is something every individual has, often times people do not have any hobby. So, what should you do in such cases. Simply say a no. Well, remember, no matter what, never say a NO in the speaking section. If you don’t have a hobby make up the answer. In the end they are judging you on your speaking skills.

For today, let us have a look at some of the questions related to hobby that could be asked.

  1. What are your hobbies?

Hobby is something I believe pulls out the hidden talent of an individual. Although most people have one or other kind of hobbies, I love writing, reading and travelling  So, whenever I get time I usually pick some novel or a magazine or newspaper for reading. Or else when I am not reading I usually write on my blog or a diary that I have. On weekends, I mostly prefer to travel to new places. The idea of meeting new people and knowing them really excites me.

2. What do you love about your hobbies?

Frankly speaking I would say everything. Reading opens up a new world in front of me. A world I had never seen,opinions that I had never heard of. It seems as if I am present in a particular situation and having chat with some of the great writers of all times. When I write, I feel as if I am free. The idea that I am able to interact with so many people out there and in some way able to have an impact on their lives, gives a sense of responsibility as well as of achievement. Travelling on the other hand connects me with myself. When I go out in nature or interact with others I feel as if I have opened a layer of myself.

3. What type of hobbies are popular among teenagers in your country?

Hobby is something that completely depends on an individual. However, with coming years, I have observed teenagers spending time in Facebook or twitter or Instagram. However, there are even some who love music or dancing and enroll themselves in those classes. There are some kids who like painting or photography. I think it all depends on an individual and with coming times, people will surely give more importance to hobbies.

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