In the following passage some of the words have been left out. First read the passage over and try to understand what it is about. Then fill in the blanks with the help of the alternatives given.

The last decade has been (1) for management education and development. When the economies of most western countries were (2) in the early 1980’s there were (3) cuts both in corporate training and in higher education. During the boom years of the mid 1980’s there were some (4) in both areas. In the early 1990’s industrialized countries were in the (5) of another severe recession and a (6) retrenchment was to be reasonably (7) throughout the training world. But this had not been the case so far.  Many leading companies are (8) their belief in training as the key to future competitiveness and governments are (9) an era of rapid (10) in higher education.