hogann wrote:
While political discourse and the media in the United States have focused on the rise of job outsourcing, few have mentioned the sharp fall of talent “insourcing,” or the drop in enrollment of foreign-born graduate students since 2001, and its dire results. The decrease in such insourcing will hurt America’s competitiveness in basic research and applied technology, with serious consequences for years to come. The de-internationalization of graduate programs across the country will also negatively affect the global outlook and experience of the American students remaining in those programs; they will not have the opportunity to learn about foreign cultures directly from members of those cultures. What distinguishes the decline of talent insourcing from the rise of job outsourcing is that the former can be easily rectified by a policy change of the United States government.
The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in evaluating the author’s claim regarding the impact of decreased insourcing in America?
A. What is the cost to reverse the trend of insourcing in America?
B. How does insourcing replace domestic jobs lost from outsourcing?
C. Since 2001, what has been the decrease in the number of foreign-born students in America?
D. What opportunities do American graduate students have to interact regularly with foreigners who are not students?
E. What effect would a government policy have on the number of foreign graduate students?
OFFICIAL EXPLANATION
The author claims that the "decrease in such insourcing will hurt America's competitiveness in basic research and applied technology, with serious consequences for years to come." In addition, the author claims that the decline in insourcing will "negatively affect the global outlook and experience of American students" because they will "not have the opportunity to learn about foreign cultures directly from members of those cultures." We are asked to find a question whose answer would provide information useful to evaluating the claims of the argument.
(A) The focus of the argument is not on the financial costs of insourcing.
(B) The focus of the argument is not on how insourcing can compensate for outsourcing.
(C) The focus of the argument is not on the specific numbers of foreign-born students, but on the decline in their number instead.
(D) CORRECT. The argument assumes that the students will not have contact with foreigners through channels other than school. This choice asks whether the students have such contact elsewhere. If the answer to this question is "yes", the author's claims carry less weight.
(E) A government policy might have an effect on insourcing, but it would not necessarily have an effect on the specific claims of the argument.