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The economic value of scientific research – and above all "blue sky" research which has no planned connection to products of commercial value – has been demonstrated beyond dispute by the phenomenal success of the American technological communities such as Silicon Valley, built round Stanford University and Berkeley in California and Route 128 in Boston, built around Harvard and MIT. Every serious study of economics suggests that the way to foster such technological success stories is to concentrate money in universities of clear international status. even if this means "unfairly" starving institutions already relatively poor.

There is also a broader reason why centres of learning are becoming more valuable as a national economic resource. In a world economy where the only commodities of lasting value are imagination, intelligence and understanding of human behaviour, there can be nothing more important for the long-term prosperity of any nation than the attitudes instilled in elite universities, the spirit of inquiry they foster and the intellectual rigour they demand. If these skills and attitudes are gradually lost or devalued, it is certain that a nation’s economic prosperity will decline. This is particularly true of a nation such as Britain, which is now more dependent than any other major European economy of «knowledge-intensive» financial and business services and on high-tech manufacturing with large inputs of innovation, design and research. From an economic standpoint it is inconceivable that Britain could retain its present comparative advantage in such knowledge-intensive businesses and industries if the main source of that comparative advantage – the elite university system – were to continue its relative decline.

What, then, can be done to prevent university education going the same way, of other once-great British industries, ranging from car manufacturing to broadcasting? There are many steps that the universities could take, even within the existing higher education budgets. They could increase the differentials between young middle-ranking lecturers, who are only moderately underpaid, and senior professors, who are ludicrously underpaid in relation to their peers in the rest of the economy and in other countries. They could move more generally away from the system of centralised collective bargaining which has served academics so badly since they gave up their independent professional status and threw in their lot with the trade union movement in the 1970s. This would also have the advantage of spurring a general move away from the culture of excessive egalitarianism which is inimical to the inherently elitist mission of true academic excelled.

If it were not for spurious "solidarity" engendered by trade union thinking, serious academics would long since have revolted against the diversion of scarce public funding from serious teaching and research to the mindless populist goals of trebling student numbers and extracting more "productivity" from higher education by offering "degrees" in hairdressing, golf course management and gender studies. They would have been openly campaigning against the wholesale promotion of former polytechnics to university status and academic high-flyers would have been demanding decentralised and non-unionised pay negotiations, instead of insisting even in response to yesterday's Bett report that uniform nationwide pay scales must be maintained.

In the final analysis, however, nothing much can be achieved in the absence of substantial new funds. The political climate simply does not exist for bold reallocation of existing funds towards elite institutions at the expense of their populist rivals. The Government must dig into its pockets and find the l billion pounds or so in extra money that is needed each year to start to restore university salaries to reasonable levels.

And what if Treasury mandarins say that the Government cannot afford it? They should all be sacked for stupidity and replaced by underpaid university economists. These academics could quickly demonstrate that increasing university funding would be the greatest possible economic bargain for Britain. Furthermore, the academics would happily do the mandarins' job for half the present Treasury wages – leaving both themselves and the nation a lot better off.

(Anatole Kaletsky, Times)

I. Find English equivalent for the following:

- выдающийся;

- ссылаться на отсутствие денег;

- быть обреченным на что-то;

- начинающие репортеры;

- четверть зарплаты;

- критерий;

- с точки зрения экономики;

- самая большая экономическая сделка;

- более низкой квалификации;

- продвигать знания;

- поборник равноправия;

- в конце концов.

II. Answer the questions:

1. When did Britain win pre-eminent position in the academic world?

2. What does Bett report say about?

3. What does the Government plead?

4. What does the Government demand?

5. What is the matter of primary importance for a society?

6. What has Thatcherite materialists and populist egalitarians been doing?

7. Why are the centres of learning becoming more valuable as a national economic resource?

8. What can be done to prevent university education from relative decline?

9. What would serious academics have opposed?

III. Say what is true and what is false. Correct the false sentences:

1. The Government pleads lack of money and demands that the universities solve their problems within their existing budgets.

2. And if there is no more money what gives will undoubtedly be the quality of he working in the universities.

3. It is surprising that the number of LSE students starting PhD courses in economics has fallen to zero.

4. But in terms of the great discoveries of the future, the top British institution will be completely outclassed by their more qualified rivals.

5. From the economic standpoint it is inconceivable that Britain could retain its present comparative advantage in such knowledge - intensive business and industries if the main source of that comparative advantage - the elite university system - were to continue its relative decline.

6. There are few steps that the universities could take even within the existing higher education budget.

7. The Government must dig into its pockets and find the 1 billion pounds or so in extra money that is needed each year to start to restore university salaries to reasonable level.

8. The academics would happily do the mandarins’ job for a third the present treasury wages leaving both themselves and the nation a lot better off.

IY. Find a word or phrase in the text which is similar to the following:

- the quality of being very good at something;

- something that is silly, untrue or unimportant;

-stupid and lacing in taste or sensitivity;

- to give someone encouragement to do something;

- hostile and harmful to an excessive extent,

Y. Express the meaning of the following words and phrases:

- Treasury;

- to outclass

- egalitarian;

- «blue sky» research;

- peer;

- spurious;

- Treasury mandarins;

- academic high-flyers;

- rival.

YI. Demonstrate the meaning of the following words and expressions in sentences of your own:

- pre-eminent;

- to be doomed;

- to outclass;

- to be worthwhile;

- twaddle;

- crass;

- to decline;

- inconceivable;

- to retain;

- spurious.

YII. Topics for discussion.

1. Nowadays condition of science in Russia.

2. Higher education in Russia.

UNIT 8

EUROPE: STILL IN SEARCH OF A DEFINITION

It is a mistake to speak of Europe, "a mere geographical expression,’’ sniffed the 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck when threatened with its disapproval for his actions. Maybe Europe is just a geographical expression, but at the very least it is quite an old one. Europeans have been conscious of their part of the world for a long time – its boundaries, topography, languages and ideas have been recognized and debated for at least 1,200 years. More than any other continent, Europe has been obsessed with its own self-definition, with ascertaining just what it is that binds "Europeans" together and distinguishes them from their neighbors. In short, with asserting the distinctive claims and self-evidence of "European civilization."

These claims – based on the intuitively obvious features of Europe: Christianity, the heritage of the Roman Empire, various natural boundaries – provide the backdrop to the modern drive to unity. But on closer inspection, the picture blurs. European civilization, for example, has had a checkered past. In the 12th century Renaissance which saw the birth of universities and city-states, throughout the Enlightenment and again since World War II, it was common practice to talk – and think – European. But in other times, much more attention was paid to local interests and parochial conflicts. And even when Europeans did invoke the idea of Europe, they frequently had very different things in mind.

Thus there has always been a Mediterranean Europe, an Atlantic Europe, a Northern Europe, distinguished by more than geography alone. There has also, for many centuries, been a mainstream Europe and a marginal one: the former defined by wealth, trade routes and established political regimes, the latter by poverty and vulnerability to invasion and imperial domination. And cutting across these there has always been the distinction between center and periphery. The center in this perspective has shifted at various times from Rome to Paris, from Vienna to Brussels. But the peripheries have remained much the same – sometimes wealthy, sometimes poor. And it is among these peripheral peoples of Europe, especially the more affluent ones to the north and west, that skepticism about the project of a united Europe has always been most marked.

Then there is the important element of size. The dimensions of European states vary greatly – from the 80 million citizens of Germany to tiny sub-Alpine statelets like Slovenia. Populous countries with long-established, secure state systems, like France or Britain, have always been wary of being absorbed anonymously into pan-European projects, whether led by popes, emperors or bureaucrats. For Europe's smaller countries it is quite different. Whatever national identity Greece has, for example, is largely a function of its place in other people's ideas of the roots of European civilization. Greece is aggressively European just because it is Greek.

The Czech Republic, under the presidency of Vaclav Havel, is enthusiastically European as the only defense against the demons of its history – most of which consists of being attacked and absorbed by overmighty neighbors, first imperial, then fascist, finally communist. For Czechs then, as for Hungarians and Poles, Europe is not just a place but an ideal of national independence and political and cultural freedom.

Vulnerable small countries like those of Central Europe, or the Netherlands and Belgium, can best maintain their distinctive cultural identities by identifying with Europe as a bulwark against their own past or ambitions of their stronger European neighbors. For them as for regions like Catalonia or Lombardy, which have long strained against the demands of a centralizing Spanish or Italian state to which they feel only an ambivalent allegiance, being European and taking pride in local identity are complementary. Larger countries, some of which have at various times aspired to absorb Europe into themselves, are nowadays more modest in their ambitions. However they remain wary of losing their special place, their distinct national image, through too close an identification with a Europe they cannot control.

But more even than size or location or history, the most significant fault line of all in Europe today runs through countries, not between them. Whatever is distinctively European about the thought or tastes or practices of the Continent has always been restricted to a transnational elite. United by command of a common language – first Latin, then French, now English – and by a freedom of movement afforded them by private resources or public support, such men and women have always been, and felt, European. It might surprise modern business executives, lecturers or politicians, as they flit from one Eurocapital to another, to know just how much they have in common with the traders, theologians and emissaries who traversed the same routes, in rather less comfort, in centuries past. Such cosmopolitan Europeans have always had more in common with one another than with their monolingual, less well-educated national compatriots.

For this other Europe of-laborers, shopworkers, clerks and storekeepers, Europe is an abstraction. Thanks to television, even the poorest of European citizens today share – or aspire to – a certain common culture. But this universal, interchangeable popular culture is of course not distinctively European at all. In Bratislava as in Bangkok, it is a sort of adapted para-American culture superficially grafted onto local life. At a deeper level the underclass of European states remains confined within narrower boundaries. Its cares and concerns are national rather than continental – and accordingly more susceptible to populist and nationalist appeals against changes wrought to its disadvantage in the name of Europe.

Has nothing, then, changed? Not quite. In Western Europe something new is in the making. The disappearance of effective national frontiers in the movement of goods, money and people is forging a sort of hybrid: men and women who feel French/Italian/Dutch and European too, depending on what they are doing.

In Central Europe, however, Europe is still a project, a solution to national dilemmas rather than a newly experienced way of life. And in "outer» Europe, from Latvia to Serbia, Europe is still a hotly contested notion, a cosmopolitan aspiration of one part of the local elite angrily contested by others for whom the national option offers emotional appeal and politica1 advantage.

Yet even in Western Europe there is something odd about the latest version of European civilization. A common currency is being imposed from above and from abroad. The member states of the European Union have come together and forged a community less to build a clearly envisioned future than to avert return to an all-too-well understood past (in this respect, at least, Western and Eastern Europe are at one). Europeans, in short, are bound together above all by the unpleasant memory of their mutual antagonisms and the desire to keep them at bay. And, worse, they are increasingly bound by their common fear of Europe's continuing vulnerability at its edges, no longer to military threat so much as to waves of immigrants from the south and east.

Between an open-ended ambition for continental union and a return to Fortress Europe, the dividing line is thin and far from clear. When we add to this the growing division within Europe itself, between the havens and the have-nots, the "Europeans" and the "nationalists," it becomes difficult to say for sure just how far the Continent, and especially its peripheries, has truly resolved the dilemmas inherited from its divided past. The idea and ideal of Europe remain as murky as ever. More than just a geographical expression, certainly, but less than an answer.

(Tony Judt, Time)

I. Find English equivalents for the following;

- осознавать;

- наследие;

- в другие времена;

- Европа эпохи Просвещения;

- средиземноморская Европа;

- Римский Папа;

- гордиться;

- противоречивый;

- более искренние в своих стремлениях;

- в прошлые столетия;

- соотечественник.

II. Answer the questions:

1. Why Europe is not «a mere geographical expression»?

2. What are Europeans’ claims based on?

3. What mainstream Europe is characterised by?

4. What are the main features of periphery?

5. How do small Europe’s countries feel being European?

6. What unites a transnational elite?

7. How does ordinary people feel about Europe?

8. What is odd about the latest version of European civilization?

III. Say what is true and what is false. Correct the false sentences:

1.More than any other continent, Europe has been obsessed with its own self-definition.

2. The dimensions of European states do not vary greatly.

3. Vulnerable small countries can best maintain their distinctive cultural identities by identifying with Europe as a bulwark against their own past or ambitions of their stronger European neighbors.

4. Wealthy Europeans have always had more in common with one another than with their monolingual, less well-educated national compatriots.

5. Thanks to broadcast, even the poorest of European citizens today share a certain common culture.

6. In Western Europe there is nothing strange about the latest version of European civilization.

7. Europeans are bound together above all by the unpleasant memory of their mutual antagonism and the desire to keep them at bay.

IY. Find a word or phrase in the text which is similar in meaning to the following:

- demand that people should recognize your good qualities or status, or right to something;

- a particular part of something or characteristic it has;

- someone who has a lot of money or a high standard of living;

- to have a strong ambition to achieve something;

- something that puts you in a better position than other people;

- to prevent something unpleasant from happening;

- dark and rather unpleasant;

- all the qualities, beliefs and ideas which make you feel that you are different from everyone else or that you belong to a particular group.

Y. Express the meaning of the following words and phrases:

- self-evidence;

- checkered past;

- Enlightment;

- parochial conflicts;

- bulwark;

- to flit;

- compatriots;

- to adopt;

- to keep them at bay;

- the haves and the haves-not;

- to have in common.

YI. Demonstrate the meaning of the following words and expressions in sentences of your own:

- to distinguish;

- feature;

- drive;

- parochial;

- affluent;

- long-established;

- wary;

- ambivalent;

- to graft;

- to avert.

YII. Topics for discussion:

1. Is Russia a European country?

2. Is it possible to reach a real unanimity in Europe? Why?

UNIT 9

FRIENDS INDEED

0ne day you may see in your supermarket a handsome labrador taking goods off the shelves and putting them into a basket. No, your eyes won't be deceiving you. It will be a "canine partner for independence" helping its wheelchair-bound owner with the shopping. The dog will trot off to the checkout with basket and wallet, and then return both, with the change, to its master or mistress.

Twenty-eight labradors and retrievers are being trained and financed by Canine Partners for Independence (CPI), an organisation based in Sussex and Hampshire. All the dogs have been carefully chosen for their good and giving natures and the fetching and carrying instincts which have made these breeds so successful as gun dogs. Soft-mouthed, kind, cooperative and sometimes telepathic, they cheerfully revolutionise lives seriously affected by accidents or disease.

The potential for using dogs to help physically disabled people first realised in the US in 1976, and later in Holland. CPI, a registered charity formed in 1990 and fully operative since 1995, bases its training on the Dutch method of constant praise and encouragement. The dog's first year is spent learning rudiments with a volunteer "puppy walker", followed by around four months' advanced training at the charity's headquarters.

At the end of this time, each dog has learned 90 commands and can open and shut doors, switch lights on and off, pick up dropped items, help with shopping, call a lift, press a pedestrian crossing button, empty or fill the washing machine, and, as time goes on, perform other tasks essential to the wellbeing of their particular partner.

The word partner is significant; the dogs are friends rather than servants. Their disabled master or mistress cannot force them to do anything, but if the pair have bonded well, the dogs will often anticipate what is needed.

When Esme, a chocolate coloured labrador, senses that her partner, Sarah, 21, is about to have a blackout she stands on her lap to prevent her falling out of her wheelchair or, if they're out, she may alert someone by barking.

Destry, a golden retriever, has learned to understand his partner's speech impediment caused by cerebral palsy. Endal, a cream labrador, will find lost things for his partner, who suffers from short-term memory loss, in addition to paralysis, after a road accident. Ever-watchful, Destry will gently put a foot which has fallen off a footrest back in its place. Danny, another retriever, helps his partner undress.

Danny wants to do everything and has broken a knob on the radio while trying to switch it on.

Most important of all, these dogs give companionship and enduring affection to the isolated. Those who think they are no longer wanted have an animal who needs their care; those who fear they ate a burden to their relations are at last confident enough to go out without them. You cannot mope indoors if you have a dog which needs

exercising twice a day and, once out, you will find people talking to you because of your canine partner.

Although most CPI dogs are specially bred from parents with suitable temperaments, some puppies are found to be unsuitable. And the selection of human partners can be difficult, too. Applicants must complete a questionnaire and own a garden, which is essential for exercise and if the dog is not to foul public places. The person must also learn the 90 commands by heart before amending a two-week training course in Pulborough, West Sussex, where the matching process begins.

It is not easy; a dog will only help someone it instinctively likes, and some partnerships fail. The dog returns and settles down eventually with someone else, while the human may find rapport with a different partner. Once matched, it is crucial that the dog is cared for only by his human partner to ensure the bonding remains absolute.

The advantages to disabled people provided by CP1 are obvious, but what, you may ask, about the dog? Would it not be happier in an ordinary home?

It depends on its nature, of course, but as a partner it will surely enjoy the constant companionship, for which most dogs crave. There will be no doors shut in its face, few lonely evenings while its owners go out, or long days shut in while they are at work.

The CPI dogs are clearly happy and healthy, while their partners are proud of their shining coats and beautiful condition. But it is a bond of love and trust that could lead to heartache in the future. Labradors are prone to arthritis, retrievers to malignant tumours; the death of a beloved dog is always a blow. How will these disabled people cope with a bereavement after perhaps seven or eight years of devotion? Meanwhile, CPI is now trying out a border collie – a breed with a longer lifespan – and an Australian shepherd dog.

Whatever happens, there are trained volunteers to help at every stage – some with the skills to begin a potential dog's education, others to guide and support the partnership at regular intervals. On top of the emotional satisfaction is the knowledge that when a resident CPI dog enables family carers to work again, the taxpayer is saved money – in one instance $6,000 a year.

(Diana Pullei-Thompson, Guardian)

I. Find English equivalent for he following:

- четвероногий друг;

- тщательно отобранный;

- овчарка;

- временная потеря памяти;

- заполнить анкету с вопросами;

- быть склонным к чему-либо;

- злокачественная опухоль;

- продолжительность жизни;

- начальные навыки.

II. Answer the questions:

1. In what way can canine partner help disabled people?

2. What requirements should the dog meet?

3. How are the dogs trained?

4. What are the relations between the partners based on?

5. What does the dog give a disabled person?

6. Can the dog be happy next to a disabled person?

7. What are disadvantages to both sides?

III. Say what is true and what is false. Correct the false sentences.

1. All the dogs have been carefully chosen for their good and giving natures and the fetching and carring instincts.

2. The potential for using dogs to help physically disabled people was first realized in France in 1974.

3. The dog’s first year is spent learning rudiments with a volunteer «puppy walker», followed by around four months’ advanced training at the charity’s headquarters.

4. Endal, a golden retriver, will find lost things for his partner, who suffers from short-term memory loss, in addition to paralysis, after a road accident.

5. The person must also learn the go commands by heart before attending a three-week training course in Pulborough, West Sussex, where the matching process begins.

6. The CPI dogs are clearly happy and healthy, while their partners are proud of their shining coasts and beautiful condition.

7. Whatever happens, there are trained volunteers to help at every stage - some with the skills to begin a potential dog’s education, others to guide and support the partnership now and then.

IY. Find a word or phrase in the text in the meaning is similar to the following:

- to give the opportunity to do something:

- to express strong approval for someone’s qualities or achievements;

- a building or other place where the leaders of the organization work;

- to realize that something may happen before it actually does happen, so that you are prepared for it;

- a feeling of fondness and caring for another person;

- to warn someone of danger or trouble so that they are ready to act quickly;

- someone who formally asks to be given something;

- a relationship in which people have a special ability to understand each other’s feelings;

- to want something very much;

- the experience or state of having had a close relative or friend die.

Y. Express the meaning of the following words and phrases:

- giving nature;

- breed;

- telepathic;

- speech impediment;

- to mope;

- devotion;

- to crave.

YI. Demonstrate the meaning of the following words and expressions in sentences of your own:

- to enable;

- disabled;

- blackout;

- to anticipate;

- to alert;

- affection;

- burden;

- suitable;

- to cope with;

- bereavement.

YII. Topics for discussion:

1.Possibilities and social activity of disabled people in Russia.

2.Who should take care of such kind of people: family, state or charitable organisation.

UNIT 10

SPIRIT LEVEL

(part 1)

Knots of earnest young men are diligently sawing and hammering away, converting the storehouse of a former winery into a place of prayer. The space is large, and the plain white walls – decorated with little stars and other geometric shapes – exude a sense of tranquillity. Despite tight construction deadlines, every Friday the men put aside their tools, spread rugs on the floor and are joined by more than 600 other Muslims in this makeshift mosque for weekly prayers. When the work is finished in 2000, the Tawba (or Repentance) Mosque – complete with library, nursery, and hobby room for women – located in this drab corner of northwest Copenhagen will be Denmark's largest mosque.

The site of the Tawba Mosque is both ironic and oddly appropriate. Ironic because, as a place of prayer for a religion that frowns upon the consumption of alcohol, it is situated in an old winery. And it's in Denmark, a country not normally associated with a large and active Muslim population. The mosque's location is oddly appropriate, though, because these days Islamic communities are found – and are flourishing – in the most surprising places; indeed, 10%of Copenhagen's population is Muslim. In many respects, the Tawba Mosque is a metaphor for the way in which Islam is taking root in the mainly Christian countries of Western Europe. Muslims have had to improvise to overcome the problems of being both cultural and religious immigrants, learning to live as minority communities within societies that often view them with suspicion, if not open hostility.

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