Logical Reasoning

PT118 · S4 · Q15 The cost of a semester’s tuition

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The cost of a semester’s tuition at a certain university is based on the number of courses in which a student enrolls that semester.

Given that

Tuition is based on the number of courses a student enrolls in, and the cost per course hasn't risen in for years.

How can it be that

Many students who could afford tuition when they enrolled now say they cannot?

Evaluate

Being able to afford tuition is relationship between how much money the students have access to and how much money the tuition costs.

The stimulus makes it seem like the cost of tuition per course has not changed.

So we'd either have to explain a dip in affordability by saying that students are taking more courses than they used to (so their tuition cost is higher), or that they have access to less money than before (their other expenses have gone up / their income has gone down).

Goal

This is an EXCEPT question, so we want to eliminate the four answers that explain declining affordability by raising the students' tuition bills or lowering their access to money.

15.

Each of the following, if true, helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy above EXCEPT:

Correct
Faculty salaries at the university
Why this is right
It's pretty common on EXCEPT questions for (A) to be the correct answer. It sort of surprises you by being irrelevant before you were ready for what irrelevant feels like. Faculty salaries are a cost to the university, not to the students. This would only be relevant to a student's tuition bill (not their access to money). But the passage already tells us the per-course cost did not rise, so whatever the university pays its faculty has not been passed along in higher tuition costs. If we told ourselves that "because salaries rose, tuition rose", we'd be cheating the paradox.
Skill tested: Paradox · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
74% picked this
The number of courses per
Opposite
This points to a rising cost of tuition. Even though each course costs the same, since the students are now required to take more courses, their tuition bill could be higher and that's why they can no longer afford tuition.
5% picked this
The cost of living in
Opposite
This points to a reason why students nowadays have less money available to pay for their tuition, so even if their tuition bill is the same, they might no longer be able to afford it because their other expenses have risen.
4% picked this
The university awards new students
Opposite
This is another storyline for how students have less access to money. It's possible that their grades were too low to continue qualifying for scholarship money, and so that's why they can no longer afford tuition.
16% picked this
The university has turned many
Opposite
This is another storyline for how students have less access to money. It's possible that some students lost their campus job, didn't find another source of income, and hence can no longer afford tuition.
1% picked this

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