AzWildcat1 wrote:
In the United States, of the young adults who move from one state to another to attend college, the percentage who attend college in California has decreased by five percentage points over the past ten years. Since many local businesses in California cater to college students,these declines are likely to have a noticeably negative economic effect on these businesses and therefore on the economy on California.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument given?
Question analysis:
If there are some "x" students moving from one state to another, and before 10 years 80% moved to California, over the 10 years 80% has dropped to 75%.
The argument says that this decrease in percentage students moving to California will have a negative economic effect on the overall economy of the state.
If we read the argument carefully, the author seems to making a big assumption that the number of students have remained constant over the 10 years. May be the number of students that used to move from one state to another has increased to 100,000 from 1000. Thus the number of students moving to California (based on assumed percentage) actually improve from 800 to 75,000.
Question - Weaken
Option Analysis:
(A) The number of young adults who moved from one state to another to attend college has increased significantly over the past ten years.
This is exactly what we had previously thought.
Correct answer(B) Young adults who moved from one state to another to attend college moved a greater distance,on average, last year than such people did ten years ago.
This means that the greater number of students are moving from, say, east coast to west coast of from west coast to east coast. In any case, the conclusion is not weakened or strengthened.
(C) Young adults were more likely to move from another state to attend college in New York last year than young adults were ten years ago.
We can say that there is a higher percentage of students moving to New York. So we can argue that these students are moving to New York instead of moving to California. However, if the number has increased to as discussed in "analysis", the increase in this percentage can hardly affect the conclusion.
(D) The number of young adults who left California to attend college in another state was greater last year than it was ten years ago.
But this option does not provide sufficient information about number of students that shifted to California
(E) California attracts more young adults who move from one state to another to attend college than does any other state.
Let us say that 10 years ago, of 10000 California attracted 5000 students. And last year of the 100,000 California attracted 9000. The rest 91000 can be divided in 91 regions to provide 1000 per region --> This scenario strengthens the conclusion.
However, we can also construct a different scenario where California attracted 20,000 and the rest 80000 were divided among 91 regions. Hence, both cases are feasible.
In addition to that, we do not have any information about regional distribution of students, number of students (increase/decrease) etc.
Thus A is the right answer!