Logical Reasoning

PT138 · S4 · Q11 Most universities today offer students

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Most universities today offer students a more in-depth and cosmopolitan education than ever before.

Conclusion

Most universities today offer a more in-depth and cosmopolitan education than ever before.

Evidence

Most history courses used to only require reading that barely covered African or Asian history other than ancient stuff and barely covered Native American cultures. But now the history courses at most schools do cover that stuff more.

Evaluate

If we were analyzing this argument for missing Idea Math, we could say that the author is assuming, .

If we were thinking of objections (that could be ruled out by a correct answer), we might think, your educationhistory courses" at most universities.

Are history courses a good indicator of the overall depth and cosmopolitanism of the education at that university?

Goal

Look for an answer saying, "yes, history is a representative sample", or , or .

11.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument above?

  1. The history courses that university

    Out of Scope: interesting

    We're not discussing how interesting students do or don't find these classes, just how in-depth and cosmopolitan the education. There's no common sense link between "depth / cosmopolitanism" and "student interest". This answer gives us a relationship between those topics, but we have no sense of whether students at most universities are more interested than they used to be.

    2% picked this

  2. Many students at universities whose

    Too Weak

    This seems to help somewhat because being forced to do study-abroad definitely sounds like a cosmopolitan education. But "many" is a very unimpressive quantity (it could be as little as 10 or 20 students). Also we don't know if most universities "require reading books covering all periods and world cultures", only that most universities no longer have such a blind spot when it comes to Asian / African / Native American history. So the "study-abroad" value this answer provides is attached to many people at an unknown number of universities.

    5% picked this

  3. Correct

    The extent to which the

    Why this is right

    This is an atypical correct answer for Strengthen, because it acts more like a Necessary Assumption, just linking Premise language to Conclusion language. However, you can imagine that if history courses were not a strong indication of how in-depth / worldly the education was, that would be a huge objection. So it definitely strengthens the argument to be told that the author's Evidence is a strong indication of her Conclusion.

    Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    83% picked this

  4. Universities at which the history

    Weakens

    This points out the potentially atypical sample of history courses, as a proxy for "university education". It makes it seem like history courses and overall education are sometimes not fair to compare, when it comes to cultural depth / worldliness.

    0% picked this

  5. University students who in their

    Too Weak

    This is a fair assumption the author is making, but validating this assumption doesn't have as much power as validating the assumption in (C). The author was saying that the old history education didn't include important cultures like African, Asian, and Native American. She wasn't saying that any history courses covered the history of a single culture, so even though she would agree with this statement presumably it's not really addressing any issue the author was examining. Since the author's Conclusion is about a change, that most universities' education is now more in-depth and worldly, a stronger answer does more to convince us that something has changed for the better. (C) works because we went from being less inclusive to more inclusive, by adding coverage of A/A/NA cultures. (E) doesn't give us a way to say, "because we're doing more of X, we're getting more of Y".

    10% picked this

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