LR Question 12 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: For years, university administrators, corporations…
QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen
CONCLUSION: There is no imminent shortage of engineers.
REASONING: Engineering and science salaries have stayed stable; they aren’t increasing. Unemployment is the same as in other fields.
ANALYSIS: This is a simple argument, but it’s worded strangely. It took me a while to understand it. The conclusion is that we have enough engineers and scientists. Here are the two reasons, in plainer English:
- If we had a shortage, engineering salaries would be increasing. But salaries aren’t increasing.
- If we had a shortage, unemployment would be low. But unemployment is normal. That means we have enough scientists and engineers.
Take hard sentences part by part. For instance: “There is little upward pressure on the salaries of scientists and engineers”. The “salaries of scientists and engineers” is how much we pay them. If there were “upward pressure”, that would mean we’re paying them more. Meaning there is a shortage. Instead, there is no upward pressure. Therefore there is no shortage.
This is already a good argument. Make it stronger by showing another reason why we won’t have a catastrophic shortage of scientists and engineers.
___________
- This doesn’t matter. The question is about the number of scientists all across society.
- This was tempting, but I don’t know why. It’s just something that’s obviously true. It doesn’t help show there are enough engineers. Almost any profession has “some chance of financial success”; this doesn’t tell us people will be flooding into engineering.
- CORRECT. University students from the past five years will soon be entering the profession. So we currently have no shortage, and this answer tells us there’s a ready supply of new scientists and engineers in the pipeline.
- This is just fluff. The argument is talking about undersupply in the scientific market in general. This answer doesn’t tell us what’s happening in the overall scientific market.
- This weakens the argument. If skills must be kept current, then it is harder to keep up the supply of engineers.
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I thought that strengthening questions were about strengthening the already existing premises. I saw C as an additional premise supporting the conclusion but I thought it was out of scope because it did not strengthen the support given by any of the premises in the argument. How can I know when to pick an answer choice that adds an additional premise?
First, as a rule, if an answer seems to strengthen the conclusion, just pick it. By the odds it does strengthen a premise, and you don’t want to nitpick your way out of choosing the right answer.
This one does in fact strengthen the premises.
Conclusion: We don’t have a shortage of engineers
Reasoning: If we saw a shortage we would see things such as rising salaries and low unemployment
C says “We’ve had more engineering students”. If we actually had a shortage, we’d expect to see a smaller number of students. So this is another indirect factor which supports the idea that we don’t have a shortage. I say indirect because the students don’t necessarily graduate, or join the labour market, etc. And a shortage also depends on supply and demand, while C only speaks to a source of supply.
So if you view the author’s reasoning “here are some signs we don’t have a shortage” then C is another sign you can add to the pile.
But really don’t add restrictions as to what needs to be strengthened. If it strengthen, it pretty much meets the criteria. Can’t think of a single wrong answer that did strengthen, but strengthened the conclusion only, and so was wrong.
(Certainly as a tendency you’re looking to strengthen the whole argument, but that’s just a tendency.)
Sorry my last comment seemed argumentative but I was sincerely seeking a reason it wasn’t correct lol
But I don’t see how C could be seen as objectively better than B.
C would be objectively better if it said “the increase of students in university… is greater than the projected increase of demand for said students.”
B seems just as good because it’s saying that if demand were to increase it would create an incentive and you’d naturally get more students in the field.
“some prospect” is so weak as to be meaningless. It could be a 0.0001% chance. On strengthen questions you have to take answers at their weakest, and if an answer is so weak as to be meaningless then it is wrong regardless of what it says. It’s like eating 0.00000001% of a banana or a donut: impactless. An answer choice like B is essentially a homeopathic answer choice: so diluted it can’t possibly work.
Notice that C has a higher minimum bound: “increased significantly”. You have to consider it because the minimum quantity is large enough to have an impact.
I thought B was tempting too and almost picked it. I believe that it’s tempting not only because it’s a true statement, but because it also relates to one of the premises: the upward pressure one. It’s is a trap answer meant to get you confused/make you lose sight of your task.
Answer B could actually weaken the argument. If students are attracted to fields where there is a greater chance of financial success, then maybe they will stop majoring in science and engineering since those salaries aren’t rising (according to the stimulus). Thus, maybe there will soon be a shortage of scientists and engineers! Note, however, that the stimulus doesn’t actually say that there is “no prospect of financial success” though, only that salaries aren’t rising. And, of course, we don’t want to weaken the argument.
When reading fast, under pressure, it’s easy to get all mixed up here and lose sight of the core, particularly because it plays off common-sense assumptions the reader might hold.
>then maybe they will stop majoring in science and engineering since those salaries aren’t rising (according to the stimulus).
Careful. The stimulus didn’t say that engineering salaries are LOW. It said they stopped rising. They could still be very high.
This is the difference between relative terms. The LSAT tests this difference mercilessly, so you need to be aware of it.
Relative: Higher, rising
Absolute: High
What I’m saying is that engineering may have the highest starting salaries, even if they currently aren’t rising.