For-profit colleges serve far fewer students than either public or pri

Question

For-profit colleges serve far fewer students than either public or private non-profit colleges. At the same time, relative to non-profit colleges, for-profit colleges draw a disproportionate share of federal and state financial aid, such as tuition grants and guaranteed loans, for their students. It must be, then, that for-profit colleges enroll a greater proportion of financially disadvantaged students than do non-profit colleges.

In assessing the argument above, it would be most useful to compare

A the proportion of financially disadvantaged students served by public and private non-profit colleges

B the extent to which for-profit and non-profit colleges engage in fraudulent practices in helping their students obtain unneeded federal and state financial aid

C the number of students receiving federal and state financial aid at for-profit colleges and non-profit colleges

D the quality of education received by financially disadvantaged students at for-profit colleges and non-profit colleges

E the rates of default on loan repayments among graduates of for-profit and non-profit colleges

haardiksharma · Answer

Someone please Explain 
B vs C here

anirudhsuhag.25 · Answer

For-profit colleges serve far fewer students than either public or private non-profit colleges. At the same time, relative to non-profit colleges, for-profit colleges draw a disproportionate share of federal and state financial aid, such as tuition grants and guaranteed loans, for their students. It must be, then, that for-profit colleges enroll a greater proportion of financially disadvantaged students than do non-profit colleges.

In assessing the argument above, it would be most useful to compare

A the proportion of financially disadvantaged students served by  public and private non-profit colleges  - Incorrect comparison

B the extent to which for-profit and non-profit colleges engage in fraudulent practices in helping their students obtain unneeded federal and state financial aid

C the  number of student receiving federal and state financial aid  at for-profit colleges and non-profit colleges - We will be unable to assess the argument until we have the Total number of students enrolled in each of the colleges.

D the  quality of education  received by financially disadvantaged students at for-profit colleges and non-profit colleges - We are not concerned with quality.

E the  rates of default on loan repayments among graduates  of for-profit and non-profit colleges- Rates of default does not tell us anything. It is not necessary that only children who need financial aid will default on loan repayment.

I have chosen option B as the answer by eliminating all the other answer choices.

aragonn · Answer

Similar type of question : https://gmatclub.com/forum/for-profit-s ... 49192.html

renjana · Answer

For-profit colleges -> fewer students than either public or private non-profit colleges.

for-profit colleges draw a  disproportionate share

for-profit colleges   enroll a greater proportion   of financially disadvantaged students than do non-profit colleges.

In assessing the argument above, it would be most useful to compare

A the proportion of financially disadvantaged students served by public and private non-profit colleges - > Can anyone please explain me why A is wrong ?

B the extent to which for-profit and non-profit colleges engage in fraudulent practices in helping their students obtain unneeded federal and state financial aid -  If they do engage then it weakens the argument . if they do not then it strengthens

C the number of students receiving federal and state financial aid at for-profit colleges and non-profit colleges -  the number doesnt matter .Its about the proportion because we already know the number of students in for profit are lower

D the quality of education received by financially disadvantaged students at for-profit colleges and non-profit colleges -  out of scope

E the rates of default on loan repayments among graduates of for-profit and non-profit colleges -  out of scope

pikolo2510 · Answer

Hello  GMATNinja

I didn't quite understand how option B is helping to evaluate the argument ? Although it the only option left that I can't eliminate for any reason. But i want to understand how will it be useful to evaluate

Masterscorp · Answer

A is incorrect because it compares private non-profit colleges to public non-profit colleges. This is out of scope because we wan't to compare non-profit colleges with for-profit colleges, regardless of whether they're private or public. Hope that helps

VG732G · Answer

The question talks about comparing the proportion of financially disadvantaged students to non-financially disadvantaged students in for-profit and non-profit colleges. It would be impossible to compare the proportions just by knowing the number of students receiving federal and state financial aid at for-profit colleges and non-profit colleges.

hassu13 · Answer

@e-gmat,  GMATNinja 
Quality of education is certainly a factor that is a critical result determined by the funding.If quality of education is poor then its not necessary that for profit colleges enroll a greater proportion of financially disadvantaged students. Can someone pl elaborate as to why option d is wrong

Kchhaparwal · Answer

Still not convinced with the reason to go for C over B

Desertchampion · Answer

The official explanation is below:

(1) Identify the Question Type

The question stem asks what would be most useful to compare in assessing the argument, so this is an Evaluate the Argument question.

(2) Deconstruct the Argument

The premises state that while for-profit colleges serve fewer students than other colleges, they draw a disproportionately large share of financial aid. The author concludes from this that for-profit colleges much have a larger proportion of financially disadvantaged students. This makes sense—if these students are getting more financial aid, presumably they are more in need of that aid. However, the author assumes that there is no other reason for the increased level of aid. Maybe students at other colleges are less aware of the aid available to them, or perhaps some other factor at for-profit colleges makes the students more likely apply for aid, or to be granted that aid once they apply. Maybe the financial aid officers at those schools are especially skilled at bringing in the grants.

(3) State the Goal

In an Evaluate the Argument question, the goal is to choose a question or piece of information that would make it easier to determine if the conclusion is valid. What would test the author’s assumption here? It’s hard to predict the exact answer, but it might address whether something other than the students’ overall level of financial need might account for the difference in aid received at for-profit colleges.

(4) Work from Wrong to Right

(A) This answer choice simply compares two kinds of non-profit colleges. This doesn’t shed any light on how they might differ from for-profit colleges. This is a classic comparison trap, in that it compares two elements that don’t need to be compared.

(B) CORRECT. Fraud? That would do it. If for-profit colleges are misrepresenting their students in order to draw unneeded aid, then their high levels of aid would not necessarily indicate that their students were financially disadvantaged.

(C) This is a better comparison than that provided in answer choice (A), but it only deals in number, not proportion. For-profit schools serve fewer students than non-profits, so knowing the numbers of students receiving aid would not allow you to make a reasonable comparison without knowing the total enrollment numbers. In any case, the argument already says that the for-profit schools get more aid per student.
 
 (D) The quality of education is entirely out of scope here. The argument is only about the proportion of financially disadvantaged students served, not how well those students are served.

(E) Again, default rates are out of scope. Even if you stretch and assume that financially needy students are more likely to default on their loans in the future (this assumption is not supported), you still wouldn’t know that a higher loan default rate at for-profit colleges wasn’t simply a function of the higher levels of aid.

Please give kudos if this was helpful in any way!

Sambon · Answer

KarishmaB   DmitryFarber

I understand why C is correct. But could you help with evaluating answer choice A? The conclusion is "that for-profit colleges enroll a greater proportion of financially disadvantaged students than do non-profit colleges."

And knowing A would tell us the proportion of financially disadvantaged students served by non-profit colleges. If for example, the proportion served by non-profit colleges is ≥50% the conclusion is weakened, and if the proportion is <50% the conclusion is strengthened. Of course, I am assuming that the total number of financially disadvantaged college students is made up only of students enrolled in for-profit colleges and non-profit colleges - is that not a reasonable assumption?

DmitryFarber · Answer

Sambon

The conclusion is about whether for-profit schools serve a disproportionate number of disadvantaged students. In other words, we're wondering if disadvantaged students make up a larger percent of the total enrollment at each kind of school. Knowing about the total SHARE of disadvantaged students doesn't affect that. The author has already told us that for-profit schools have far fewer students than non-profits, so it wouldn't be a problem to find that most disadvantaged students go to non-profits. That wouldn't tell us what percentage these students represent at each kind of school.

As an analogy, consider the world population of English speakers. We can probably agree that the US has a higher proportion of English speakers than most countries. In other words, a very large percentage of people in the US speak English. However, most English speakers do NOT live in the US. That doesn't change our logic at all.

Also, when you see an answer that seems to just directly tell you whether the conclusion is right or wrong, expect a trap. If we could use info from A to directly disprove the conclusion, that would be great, but it's a little too good to be true. In those cases, go back and reread carefully to see if what you have is really as useful as it looks. Typically, you will find that it is not!

Sambon · Answer

Thank you Dmitry for a great explanation and a perfect analogy - makes sense now. Seems like I totally misinterpreted the conclusion.

I understood "enroll a  greater proportion of financially disadvantaged students " to mean to enroll  a greater percentage OF the total number of financially disadvantaged students . Instead, as you pointed out, the conclusion is saying that the proportion of financially disadvantaged students within the total enrollment at for-profit colleges was greater than at non-profit colleges.

While we're on this topic - what language clues in the passage pushed you to interpret the conclusion the correct way? Because percentages and ratios are such important topics in all sections of the GMAT, it'd be good to learn whether there are standard ways to describe proportions and totals to avoid making similar mistakes

DmitryFarber · Answer

Sambon

Interesting question. I'm not sure there's one definitive word or phrase I looked at, but here are a few things to notice:

First, let's look at the wording of the conclusion itself. Granted, it could be seen as ambiguous, but note that if the author had simply wanted to look at percentage of the total, they'd just be comparing number. In that case, they could simply have said "for-profit colleges enroll MORE disadvantaged students" or "a greater NUMBER of disadvantaged students." The fact that they used that lengthier phrasing is itself evidence.

Second, keep in mind that while arguments in Assumption Family CR (assumption, str/wkn, evaluate) will always be flawed, they should still be somewhat reasonable. The conclusion as I interpreted it is much closer to the premises. Sure, it's theoretically possible for the schools to serve far fewer students overall and still serve a greater number of disadvantaged students. (For instance, maybe ALL or nearly all disadvantaged students go to for-profit schools.) However, this doesn't stem in any reasonable way from the premises. However, as long as we assume that aid received is actually a good measure of aid needed, then the other version of the conclusion actually works pretty well. So the argument has one main flaw (how meaningful is it that more aid is received per student?), rather than a wildly disconnected conclusion. That's how CR typically works.

Third, it's also worth bearing in mind that the premises are also about proportion. We just know that the aid going to these schools is out of proportion: it's more than we'd expect given the number of students enrolled. We don't know anything about how much aid is actually received. For all we know, these schools only receive 1% of total aid. It may just be that we'd EXPECT them to receive even less.

Alijavad · Answer

Can you please help me with the question? I do not understand what it requires, like how I can immediately get that the question wants me to evaluate the argument. Also, the explanation(

DmitryFarber · Answer

Alijavad

You have to watch out for synonyms on this test! This question asks us what would be useful in "assessing the argument," but for our purposes, assessing and evaluating are the same thing. The question doesn't say to strengthen or weaken, nor does it ask for an assumption. It just wants to know what would be useful in order to figure out whether the argument is good. That's an Evaluate question.

Did you have a separate question about the explanation? I see that Desertchampion has provided a full write-up, so let us know if there's a specific issue that's bothering you.

djangobackend · Answer

say FP = 100 total students, NP = 1000 total students 
and 50% needy students in FP and 40% needy students in NP 
so FP needy = 50, NP needy = 400
these numbers still doesn't resolve that why FP are getting more funding than NP even though with these numbers it looks like NP should get more funding.

whereas B - "the extent to which for-profit and non-profit colleges engage in fraudulent practices in helping their students obtain unneeded federal and state financial aid" - if frauds in FP are much higher than NP then it can explain that how that are getting so much funding, maybe they are showcasing they are needy but they don't really need the money - thats the fraud.

DmitryFarber · Answer

Careful. One of the premises is that FP schools are getting a  disproportionate  share of aid. In this context, that would mean getting more aid on average per student, not getting more overall funding. (More funding for NP would be proportionate.) From this, the author concludes that FP must have more needy students. Since this is the opinion at issue, you don't want to pick numbers that make it true. If the issue here is that we don't know whether the % needy is higher at FP than NP, then you don't want to bake that idea into your numbers. If you do, that makes the conclusion true automatically.

If you want to analyze this with numbers, it should look more like this:

FP has 100 total students, NP has 1,000 total students
FP funding = $200,000. NP funding = $1,000,000.
In this case, NP have 10x as many students, so they should have 10x the funding.
However, they only have 5x the funding. Why?
Author's explanation: FP have needier students.
B's explanation: FP cheat to get more $$

BinodBhai · Answer

Acc to AI (which I believe is 99.9% of the times correct) the answer is C and even I feel its better.. since its not even official question.. I will debate and put up my argument below:

This option directly addresses the relationship between the aid drawn and the number of students receiving aid.

If (C) shows that a much larger number of students at for-profit colleges receive aid (despite fewer total students), it would support the idea that a higher proportion of their student body is financially disadvantaged (assuming aid is primarily for the disadvantaged).

However, if (C) shows that the number of students receiving aid is actually smaller at for-profit colleges, then the "disproportionate share of aid" mentioned in the premise must mean that each student at a for-profit college receives a much larger amount of aid.  If this were true, it would weaken the conclusion.  A smaller number of students getting a large amount of aid doesn't necessarily mean a higher proportion of their overall student body is disadvantaged. It could mean that the aid structure itself is different.

For-profit colleges have high fees, what if just 1-2 students ate up most of the budget?

For-profit colleges serve far fewer students than either public or pri

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For-profit colleges serve far fewer students than either public or pri

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