Q13 - University administrator: Graduate students

[kmaikristofferson]

I identified the C as the first sentence: Graduate students are wrong in claiming that teaching assistance should be considered university employees and thus should get employee benefits.

P: They are wrong because teaching assistants are only teaching assistants to fund their education.

I immediately eliminated (A) and (E). I then chose (D).

Is C correct because it proposes another reason the university is hiring teaching assistance?

Thanks!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Exactly right Mai!

Consider the administrator's position, "the sole purpose of having teaching assistants perform services for the university is to enable them to fund their educations."

Answer choice (C) undermines that point by suggesting their is another reason why they are there -- economy.

Incorrect Answers
(A) benefits the graduate students and so could be part of helping graduate students afford their educations.
(B) is out of scope. It doesn't tell us anything about why the graduate students are there.
(D) is quite tempting! But graduate students would need more money than just their tuition costs in order to afford their education: rent, food, clothing, books, etc...
(E) is also tempting. If one thinks the argument is saying that the graduate students are charity cases and that they don't do much at the university, this would be tempting. But the administrator doesn't say that the graduate students don't work hard, just that if the university wasn't trying to enable them to afford their education, they wouldn't be working there. Apparently that role could be filled others.

[jm.kahn]

Doesn't C contradict author's premise that "the sole purpose of having TAs is to enable them to fund education"?

How can an answer choice that contradicts the premise of the argument be a credited weakener? Usually premises are supposed to be true and not contradicted.

[pewals13]

I think in this argument the statement that: "the sole purpose of having teaching assistants perform services for the university is to enable them to fund their education"

is an intermediate conclusion supported by the next sentence which states

"If they were not pursuing their degrees here or if they could otherwise fund their education, they would not be holding their teaching posts at all"

If you turn the latter statement into a conditional and run the contrapositive you see that the administrator is asserting that the fact that:

being a TA REQUIRES not being able to independently fund one's education AND pursuing a degree at the university

Means that

the sole purpose of the university having TA's is to allow these students to fund their education

(C) adds a new premise undermining this intermediate conclusion and strongly suggesting there is another purpose to the TA program

[einuoa]

Doesn't C contradict author's premise that "the sole purpose of having TAs is to enable them to fund education"?

How can an answer choice that contradicts the premise of the argument be a credited weakener? Usually premises are supposed to be true and not contradicted.

I would like some clarification on this as well!
I got this through POE but this does seem to contradict the premise.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Doesn't C contradict author's premise that "the sole purpose of having TAs is to enable them to fund education"?

How can an answer choice that contradicts the premise of the argument be a credited weakener? Usually premises are supposed to be true and not contradicted.

Good question!

Actually, you've come across one of the big differences between Strengthen and Weaken questions. You CANNOT strengthen an argument by supporting a premise, but you CAN weaken an argument by undermining a premise.

While a trap answer on a Strengthen question would be a premise booster, on a Weaken question attacking the premise is perfectly legitimate.

Hope that helps!

[GraceF704]

Hi guys!
I think I figured out a way to work this one out.
Let's look at its argument core.
Premise: if they were not pursuing degrees or if they could find their education otherwise, they would not hold their teaching post.
Intermediate conclusion: the sole purpose of having TA for the university is to enable them fund their their education.
Conclusion: TA should not be considered university employees.
Here to weaken the argument we can attack the reasoning between premise and intermediate conclusion or the reasoning between intermediate conclusion and conclusion( the final one).
And I see a bug in the first one, holding teaching post requiring pursuing degrees here and unable to fund education doesn't sufficiently lead us to the university ' sole purpose is to fund them. Maybe this is a win win situation. The university can enlarge their teaching faculty when lacking teachers by employing TA and at the same time funding TA to purse degrees. Or even the latter purpose (funding TA)is just a bonus since students may apply for need based scholarship when they are not recruited as TA.
And this what C says, the purpose of university is to reduce economic cost.
Do I make myself clear?

[KenM242]

picked (A) and got it wrong, but here is my reasoning behind why (C) is correct, is where (A) is lacking.

Reaching the correct answer here requires understanding the principle (which is not explicitly stated) that the administrator applies to the premises to arrive at his conclusion.

(I will simplify the conclusion and premises for sake of clarity)

Conclusion: Graduate students don't deserve benefits.

Premise: They teach only for money. If they were rich, or studied at another university, they wouldn't be teaching here at all.

PRINCIPLE: We don't give employee status to such people. (We give employee status and the appropriate benefits only to the people who teach here for reasons more than just money.)

Now, the correct answer will have to show either

1. these teaching assistants are actually here for noble reasons other than just money (they admire the founder of the university or whatever the reason be)

or

2. show that the university does in fact hire as their employees people who work only for money.


None of the answer choices pertains to 1. so for get about it.

But (C) does exactly 2. Just to save some costs (in the interest of economy), the university is willing to hire these teaching assistants as their employees knowing that they would work only for money. This goes against their principle.

(A) while it definitely does not help the position of administrator at all, it's hard to say it 'weaken's it either. Given (A) is true; yes, so the administrator knows that hiring these teaching assistants is more costly than hiring some other random applicant. But we have no way of knowing whether this fact takes any part in the university's reluctance to hire teaching assistants as their employees. While it does gives one more reason for the university NOT to hire them, but that does not mean that the university doesn't do so for this reason. Therefore, even if (A) is true, the university hasn't violated its principle.

[snoopy]

picked (A) and got it wrong, but here is my reasoning behind why (C) is correct, is where (A) is lacking.

Reaching the correct answer here requires understanding the principle (which is not explicitly stated) that the administrator applies to the premises to arrive at his conclusion.

(I will simplify the conclusion and premises for sake of clarity)

Conclusion: Graduate students don't deserve benefits.

Premise: They teach only for money. If they were rich, or studied at another university, they wouldn't be teaching here at all.

PRINCIPLE: We don't give employee status to such people. (We give employee status and the appropriate benefits only to the people who teach here for reasons more than just money.)

Now, the correct answer will have to show either

1. these teaching assistants are actually here for noble reasons other than just money (they admire the founder of the university or whatever the reason be)

or

2. show that the university does in fact hire as their employees people who work only for money.


None of the answer choices pertains to 1. so for get about it.

But (C) does exactly 2. Just to save some costs (in the interest of economy), the university is willing to hire these teaching assistants as their employees knowing that they would work only for money. This goes against their principle.

I do agree with everything you're saying about C, especially (1). As for (2), it's not needed to prove that the university hires, as employees, people who work only for money. We just need to prove that the university hires TAs for reasons other than their "sole purpose (enabling them to fund their education). The "TA's sole purpose" part of the premise makes the admin's argument vulnerable to any other reasons as to why the university would hire a TA.

Also, for anyone who chose D (like me), it's wrong because it helps the argument. Saying most TAs earn stipends that exceed their cost of tuition demonstrates funding of education. I initially thought that if stipends exceeded the extra cost of tuition, that could mean the salary exceeds beyond the funding of education. However, that's an extra assumption to make about the answer choice. D is not attacking the conclusion-premise relationship.

[ChrisA818]

Doesn't "proposed" in C suggest that the university may not have actually made the 10% replacement? In which case, there doesn't seem to be an alternative reason to have teaching assistants. Whether the university wanted the replacement or not, if it is not actually implemented then indeed there is no other purpose for teaching assistants to perform services for the university.

Where did I go wrong in my reasoning here?

Thanks!

[abrenza123]

Can someone clarify if there is an intermediate conclusion in this argument?? I thought that the last sentence was the premise and the 3rd sentence about "sole purpose" was the intermediate conclusion.

If that is not the case, then we are attacking/contradicting the premise, correct?? This would be an exception to the rule, correct - in weakening questions would that be okay to do??

also, I was confused about D because I wasn't sure if stipend was referring to the way the TAs receive compensation from the university (as opposed to being salaried or being paid per class, etc) or if it was referring additional amount of money from a grant for research, etc. ... if it was the latter, I thought it could contradict that the sole purpose for them to teach was to fund education/ that some can fund education and are still holding the teaching position.

[ohthatpatrick]

The way to check whether anything is a conclusion is to ask:
- is it the author's opinion?
- does she provide at least one supporting idea for that?

For the 3rd sentence, is it the author's opinion?
Yeah, I guess. It reads like a fact we'd accept, but it's not quantifiable / statistical data. It's a claim about why we have TA's perform services for the university. You could conceivably construe this sentence as the Univ Admin's opinion about why we have TA's.

Does she support this idea?
i.e., why should we believe that the only purpose of having them perform services is to fund their education?

Because, if there weren't pursuing degrees or were able to pay for their degree, they wouldn't hold their TA post at all.

I think it's fair to call the 3rd sentence an Intermediate Conclusion. But, even if we call it a premise, there's no RULE that we can't go against a premise.

Books and classes and teachers teach it as though there's some rule against it (because 99.9% of LSAT questions don't try to fight the premise). But there are several examples of this throughout the 4000+ LR questions on the 87 released tests.

This is one of three or four that I can think of.

In regards to (D), a stipend is a way of being compensated for a gig. It's not hourly pay. It's not quite a salary (in part, because it doesn't usually come with benefits). Also, salaries apply to a year of work. A stipend applies to some other unit of work (my Mom used to direct the high school musical, which took about 3 months of time, and she'd get paid a few thousand flat for that).

(D) definitely seems kinda tempting, but it would only weaken if it were showing that TA's really COULD afford their education without financial assistance. The fact that the stipend might be MORE than what they need doesn't undermine the idea that they needed money in the first place to fund their education. (also, as mentioned earlier in the thread, "funding education" does not just mean paying for tuition -- there are also books and other cost of living expenses)

[Misti Duvall]

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Breakdown:
If TA's weren't pursuing degrees or could pay for their education otherwise, they wouldn't teach. So the sole purpose of TA's is to help them fund their degrees. Which means grad students are wrong to say that TA's are employees entitled to the usual benefits.

Answer Anticipation:
Hmm, this one is tricky because of the intermediate conclusion, and I'm skeptical about the SOLE purpose language. Couldn't they fund their degrees and help the university?

Correct answer:
(C)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) For weaken questions, first ask if the answer would make the conclusion less likely. If yes, keep. If no, eliminate. (A) seems to hint at some sort of bias, but it doesn't necessarily make the conclusion less likely. Eliminate.

(B) So? Just because the university pays adjuncts the same or similar doesn't change anything with regard to TAs.

(C) Bingo. This would certainly seem to help the university, making less likely the intermediate conclusion that helping grad students pay for their education is the sole purpose of TAs.

(D) Not relevant. Even if the stipends exceed the cost of tuition, that doesn't hurt the idea that TA's might be employees entitled to benefits.

(E) Seems like a good real world argument for making TA's employees, but does nothing to weaken the reasoning in this argument, which is that the sole purpose of TA's is to help the graduate students themselves.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Intermediate conclusions can be tricky because they function like premises, but they're still conclusions and can be weak links in a chain of logic.

#officialexplanation