You’re busy filling out the application form for a position you really need. Let’s assume you once

　　actually completed a couple of years of college work or even that you completed your degree. Isn’t

　　it tempting to lie just a little, to claim on the form that your diploma represents a Harvard degree? Or

　　that you finished an extra couple of years back at State University? More and more people are turning

　　to utter deception like this to land their job or to move ahead in their careers, for personnel officers,

　　like most Americans, value degrees from famous schools. A job applicant may have a good education

　　anyway, but he or she assumes that chances of being hired are better with a diploma from a well-

　　known university.

　　Registrars at most well-known colleges say they deal with deceitful claims like these at the rate

　　of about one per week. Personnel officers do check up on degrees listed on application forms, then.

　　If it turns out that an applicant is lying, most colleges are reluctant to accuse the applicant directly.

　　One Ivy League school calls them “impostors (騙子)” ; another refers to them as “ special cases

　　”. One well-known West Coast school, in perhaps the most delicate phrase of all, says that these

　　claims are made by “no such people”. To avoid outright (徹底的) lies, some job-seekers claim that

　　they “ attended” or “ were associated with” a college or university. After carefully checking, a

　　personnel officer may discover that “attending” means being dismissed after one semester. It may

　　be that “being associated with” a college means that the job-seeker visited his younger brother for a

　　football weekend. One school that keeps records of false claims says that the practice dates back at

　　least to the turn of the century—that’s when they began keeping records, anyhow. If you don’t

　　want to lie or even stretch the truth, there are companies that will sell you a phony diploma.

　　One company, with offices in New York and on the West Coast, will put your name on a

　　diploma from any number of nonexistent colleges. The price begins at around twenty dollars for a

　　diploma from “Smoot State University”. The prices increase rapidly for a degree from the “

　　University of Purdue”. As there is no Smoot State and the real school in Indiana is properly called

　　Purdue University, the prices seem rather high for one sheet of paper.

　　1. The main idea of this passage is that ______.

　　A. employers are checking more closely on applicants now

　　B. lying about college degrees has become a widespread problem

　　C. college degrees can now be purchased easily

　　D. employers are no longer interested in college degrees

　　2. According to the passage, “special eases” refers to cases that ______.

　　A. students attend a school only part-time

　　B. students never attended a school they listed on their application

　　C. students purchase false degrees from commercial firms

　　D. students attended a famous school

　　3. We can infer from the passage that ______.

　　A. performance is a better judge of ability than a college degree

　　B. experience is the best teacher

　　C. past work histories influence personnel officers more than degrees do

　　D. a degree from a famous school enables an applicant to gain advantage over others in job

　　competition

　　4. This passage implies that ______.

　　A. buying a false degree is not moral

　　B. personnel officers only consider applicants from famous schools

　　C. most people lie on applications because they were dismissed from school

　　D. society should be greatly responsible for lying on applications

　　5. The word “phony” (Para. 2) means ______.

　　A. thorough C. false B. ultimate D. decisive