For years, studies have found that first-generation college students—those who do not have a parent with a college degree—lag other students on a range of education achievement factors. Their grades are lower and their dropout rates are higher. But since such students are most likely to advance economically if they succeed in higher education, colleges and universities have pushed for decades to recruit more of them. This has created “a paradox” in that recruiting first-generation students, but then watching many of them fail, means that higher education has “continued to reproduce and widen, rather than close” an achievement gap based on social class, according to the depressing beginning of a paper forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science.

    But the article is actually quite optimistic, as it outlines a potential solution to this problem, suggesting that an approach (which involves a one-hour, next-to-no-cost program) can close 63 percent of the achievement gap (measured by such factors as grades) between first-generation and other students.

    The authors of the paper are from different universities, and their findings are based on a study involving 147 students (who completed the project) at an unnamed private university. First generation was defined as not having a parent with a four-year college degree. Most of the first-generation students (59.1 percent) were recipients of Pell Grants, a federal grant for undergraduates with financial need, while this was true only for 8.6 percent of the students with at least one parent with a four-year degree.

    Their thesis—that a relatively modest intervention could have a big impact—was based on the view that first-generation students may be most lacking not in potential but in practical knowledge about how to deal with the issues that face most college students. They cite past research by several authors to show that this is the gap that must be narrowed to close the achievement gap.

    Many first-generation students “struggle to navigate the middle-class culture of higher education, learn the ‘rules of the game,’ and take advantage of college resources,” they write. And this becomes more of a problem when colleges don’t talk about the class advantages and disadvantages of different groups of students. “Because US colleges and universities seldom acknowledge how social class can affect students’ educational experience, many first-generation students lack insight about why they are struggling and do not understand how students ‘like them’ can improve.”

答案精析：根据题干可直接定位至最后一段。最后一段前两句指出，许多第一代大学生“努力适应高等教育的中产阶级文化，学习‘游戏规则’，并利用大学资源”。当大学不考虑不同学生群体的阶级优劣势时，这个问题就变得更加严重。随后第三句用Because开头，解释了问题会变严重的原因，因为美国的学院和大学很少承认社会阶层会如何影响学生的教育经历。也就是说，由于大学忽视了社会阶层对第一代大学生造成的影响，使得该问题更加严重，所以大学对此问题负有部分责任。故正确答案为D。

错项排除：最后一段首句提到，许多第一代大学生努力适应高等教育的中产阶级文化，但并没有明确指出大学对此的态度，A项内容与原文不符，故排除。该句提及take advantage of college resources，但此处说的是学生利用大学资源去适应高等教育的中产阶级文化，并没有提到他们因缺乏资源而受到责备，故B项错误。第三句指出社会阶层会影响学生的教育经历，但并未说明这种影响是好的还是坏的，C项内容过度推断，故排除。