Q10 - The administration at a certain

[maryadkins]

10. (D)
Question Type: Strengthen

The core is:

Faculty salaries are a small part of this year’s budget and the only significant increases in scholarship aid were not for need-based aid -->

Administration’s claim that the tuition increase is for faculty salaries and need-based aid isn’t true

What’s the gap? Just because the faculty salaries are a small part of the budget doesn’t mean they didn’t go up (and that tuition dollars could be covering them). And maybe the tuition increase is going to increases in need-based aid that aren’t "significant" but are still increases. An increase is an increase"”the money’s got to come from somewhere!

This question is tricky because we are being asked to strengthen the argument against the administration"”not the administration’s argument"”so we must be careful to remember: we want to support the idea that the increased tuition is not going toward faculty salaries and need-based financial aid. (D) nails it on the head by offering a list of the expenses with the greatest increases, none of which are faculty salaries or scholarship aid.

(A) is irrelevant. We already know what we think about scholarship aid"”it’s only increased for academic scholarships, not for need-based. Giving us the amount it has increased is irrelevant.
(B) is a plausible explanation for the argument that the administration is making (which we are working against!). If faculty salaries increased by only 5 percent and tuition increased by 6, we only have a 1 percent disparity to account for. Since we are only told that "significant" increases in scholarship aid are academic, it is possible that the additional 1 percent is going toward the insignificant increase in need-based aid.
(C) is incorrect because it is out of scope. We aren’t concerned with national averages or students facing financial difficulties.
(E) may explain the motivation for the increase, but it doesn’t address the issue of where the increased tuition dollars are going, which is our concern.

[nflamel69]

I'm having trouble seeing why is B incorrect. We know that faculty salary is a small part of the overall budget. So if only increased by 5 percent, and tuition increased by 6 percent, wouldn't that mean there is a big amount of difference in between since the increase is 5 percent of a small part?

[shirando21]

We are aiming at strengthening that the administration's explanation is not believable, in other words, weakening the administration's explanation.

So the issue is, what is the administration's explanation? we find the answer from the first sentence. That is-- the university increases this year's tuition because the spending on the faculty salaries and on need-based aid to students. To me, the part after however, does not really matter.

The explanation says the increase of tuition is being used at two major places, one is the increase of faculty salary, the other is the increase of need-based aid to students. But D shows that the university uses the money raised from the icreased tuition in other places.
D offers an alternative reason to the administration's explanation, which weakens the explanation, in other words, strenthens the argument that the administration's explanation is not believable.

[uhdang]

I'm having trouble seeing why is B incorrect. We know that faculty salary is a small part of the overall budget. So if only increased by 5 percent, and tuition increased by 6 percent, wouldn't that mean there is a big amount of difference in between since the increase is 5 percent of a small part?

I had a different view on why B is incorrect, so let me share my thoughts with you.
This idea of "percentage" got my attention when I first saw this answer choice. When stated that there was 5 percent increase in faculty salaries whereas tuition increase was 6 percentage, the author is trying to convince us that biggest part of allotment in increased expenditure in fact went to faculty salaries, which would actually weaken the conclusion.

However, what's more from this answer choice is, or something we should keep in mind is that we aren't given the actual number of total faculty salaries and tuition. So, we have no idea whether 5 percent or 6 percent of each can actually compose of each other's "big part" or "small part."

To demonstrate, if faculty salaries were 100 dollars and the increase is 5 percent, there is 5 dollars increase. If tuition was 1000 dollars and the increase is 6 percent, there is 60 dollars increase. 5 dollars is definitely NOT a big part of the increase. However, if total faculty salaries were much bigger than total tuition, the scenario could go the other way around and end up supporting the administration's explanation.

Thus, with this percentage discrepancy, or dilemma, this answer choice could mean either way, and this is why it is an incorrect answer.

[pewals13]

I looked at the conclusion as having two pillars by which it is supported:

University's claim that tuition increase is because of increased faculty salaries and need-based aid is off the baloney meter.

Pillar 1. Faculty salaries constitute a small part of the university's expenditure

This is the classic ye olde LSAT flaw of confusing absolute number with percentage, just because something is a small percentage of big pie doesn't mean there wasn't a substantial increase.

Pillar 2. The only significant scholarship increases have gone to academic ones regardless of need.

I think this weakens the argument because its hard to assert that need-based scholarships are one of two primary reasons for a tuition hike when there was no significant increase in spending, yet there was on non-need based scholarships.

Answers:

(A) So what? This doesn't change what we already know--there was no major increase in need-based scholarship spending despite the university asserting it was a primary reason for the tuition hike.

(B) We have no frame of reference by which to evaluate this. Even if you assume that tuition must proportionally keep pace with spending, this would seem to weaken the argument because faculty salaries went up about as much as tuition, strengthening the notion that fatter faculty paychecks were a primary reason for the increase.

(C) No frame of reference here, maybe the national average is .000001235431% and even if more students are struggling, does that mean the university is helping them with the money they've got to burn from tuition?

(D) If the three biggest increases in spending do not include any of what the administration claimed were the entire basis for the increase, then their position is significantly weakened, thus strengthening the conclusion.

(E) A non-sequiter.

[civnetn]

Here's my interpretation of this problem:

P1 = Tuition increased because Faculty Salaries Increased AND Need-Based Student Aid Increased
P2 = Faculty Salaries only a small part of University Spending
P3 = Need-Based Student Aid has not significantly increased
Conclusion = This explanation is not believable


First, I'd like to point out that I think this is only a moderately strong argument to begin with. There could have been increased spending in both areas that although not significant could constitute an increase in tuition. Note that we are not told that tuition significantly increased. Only that it increased.

Let's look through the answer choices:

(A) I've seen several posts on here (even by moderators) claiming this answer choice is irrelevant because we know that Need-Based Student Aid has NOT increased. This simply isn't true! We aren't told that Need-Based Student Aid has NOT increased, we're told it hasn't increased significantly. This still leaves room for it to increase.

Now, you might object to this interpretation claiming that by lack of "significance," the author really means, "of an amount so negligible that it could not have accounted for the increased tuition cost," but this is the LSAT, a test that commonly makes or breaks answers on the basis of how you interpret a single word, so I'm not comfortable making that leap.

So why is this answer choice incorrect?

Well, first off, we aren't told whether it's an increase in Need-Based Scholarships or just plain old regular scholarships, but scholarships as a whole. That should be your first clue that this answer choice doesn't give us enough information to make an accurate decision. In fact, when I took this question, I eliminated this answer immediately simply because it doesn't provide enough information. Let's say 1% goes of the increase goes to Needs-Based Scholarships and 4% goes to scholarships awarded regardless of need. There are 2 problems here:

1.) % is relative to how much money is currently spent on scholarships. 4% of 10,000 is going to be less than 4% of 100,000. Again, we don't know this information, so we can't say whether 4% is significant amount of monetary increase or not.

2.) Even if it was a significant increase, the administration only claimed that Need-Based Scholarships increased. And not significantly.

(B) Again percentage is relevant so we have no idea whether this number is significant or not. Plus, what's to prevent Needs-Based Scholarships for accounting for a very insignificant remaining 1% ?

(C) I had trouble with this answer choice the first time round, but you should be able to eliminate it rather quickly. This is because we don't know what the national average is. Is it a significant amount? Who knows. Eliminate.

(E) Obviously incorrect. If it was impossible to accurately estimate, then maybe, but this only says it's difficult. Meaning it's still possible to predict incoming amount of tuition.

[kkate]

I know we should take P as given without questioning, but in this case, is it the same to assume the reasons cited by the administration for the tuition increase are the only reasons for the increase? ie. does the stimulus still remain the same if it said "...by only citing increased spending on faculty salaries and on need-based aid to students"

If this is the case, what's the LSAT test writers' intention to throw in words like "only"? Also, are we to assume these are the only reasons unless they put qualifiers such as "among other things"?

I feel like I may be overcomplicating a simple rule....but I appreciate any words of wisdom!