In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession : Critical Reasoning (CR)

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

30 Jan 2013, 04:55

VeritasPrepKarishma wrote:

eybrj2 wrote:

(B) tells you that 25% students study in private schools which charge high fees. What do you think could happen in recession? Either nothing happens or people move their kids to govt schools. In either case, govt school teachers have a secure job. (There is actually a possibility of more demand of govt school teachers during recession.) Your argument is strengthened.

Let's imagine a different scenario: a new crisis comes and many poor parents withdraw their kids from school, while all the rich ones keep theirs in the private institutions.
Wouldn't this generate an excessive number of teachers in public schools? The children are not legally obliged to go to school, as far as I understand.

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

30 Jan 2013, 20:44

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highdiving wrote:

VeritasPrepKarishma wrote:

eybrj2 wrote:

(B) tells you that 25% students study in private schools which charge high fees. What do you think could happen in recession? Either nothing happens or people move their kids to govt schools. In either case, govt school teachers have a secure job. (There is actually a possibility of more demand of govt school teachers during recession.) Your argument is strengthened.

Let's imagine a different scenario: a new crisis comes and many poor parents withdraw their kids from school, while all the rich ones keep theirs in the private institutions.
Wouldn't this generate an excessive number of teachers in public schools? The children are not legally obliged to go to school, as far as I understand.

The argument clearly gives you "Vargonia has just introduced a legal requirement that education in government-funded schools be available, free of charge, to all Vargonian children regardless of the state of the economy"
Education is available free of charge, recession or no recession. There is no reason to assume that people will take their wards out of school.

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

30 Jan 2013, 20:55

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variablechange wrote:

After taking the LSAT, and doing very well, I've endeavored to take the GMAT. From my experience, choosing B doesn't strengthen this argument.

If you assume that because of the recession people will enter public schools, that would stregnthen it, but one shouldn't assume what's offered as evidence and concluded.

If you don't assume that, then this answer choice does nothing to the argument. By it doing nothing to the argument, then the argument isn't strengthened.

Perhaps I'm off, or looking to literally from my vast experience in dealing with "LSAT CR Questions," but this answer choice seems off.

The wording of option B hints at a connection between economy and private/public schools.

During recent periods when the Vargonian economy has been strong, almost 25 percent of Vargonian children have attended privately funded schools, many of which charge substantial fees.

If we change option B to 'almost 25 percent of Vargonian children attend privately funded schools', then I agree that we would need to assume a lot to strengthen the conclusion.

Mind you, CR in LSAT and CR in GMAT are not identical. That is the reason I do not suggest my students to work on LSAT CR while preparing for GMAT (or to work very selectively). This question is from GMAT Prep so it is an official question. If you plan to take GMAT, try to identify the logic so that you can use it in other GMAT questions too.

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

31 Jan 2013, 02:22

@Karishma

What if they have to withdraw their kids from school in order to work and help the family? That is exactly what happens in some countries during deep crisis'.

I realize this is just me being polemical, but you have to admit the are some flaws in this question.

One should never think this hard on any given question, but once one does, there is, in my opinion, no way to rule out all of the other possibilities.

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

31 Jan 2013, 11:53

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highdiving wrote:

@Karishma

What if they have to withdraw their kids from school in order to work and help the family? That is exactly what happens in some countries during deep crisis'.

I realize this is just me being polemical, but you have to admit the are some flaws in this question.

One should never think this hard on any given question, but once one does, there is, in my opinion, no way to rule out all of the other possibilities.

New info will always bring some assumptions along with it. No data provided will be perfect. Often, you will be able to provide additional data and make the new info serve a contrarian purpose. For more on this, check the following explanation a posted some days back:

which-of-the-following-most-logically-completes-the-143975-20.html#p1174789

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

01 Feb 2013, 00:06

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VeritasPrepKarishma wrote:

I disagree.

SravnaTestPrep wrote:

Let us analyze choice A. It says that the current student-teacher ratio is higher now at government funded schools than it was during the last recession. Let us assume the current period to be a period of stronger economy. A higher student-teacher ratio during the current period means that during the last recession period there were less students who attended the government funded schools. It cannot be more teachers because till now during recession, jobs were cut down.

We don't know what was the scenario during recession last time. Perhaps the demography was such that there were fewer kids leading to higher student-teacher ratios. Perhaps there were more teachers in the system and with declining demand, the number of teachers in the system has decreased which has increased the student-teacher ratio. There are n number of possibilities. Nothing is given that links last recession with the current scenario. What you are given is the current scenario and what you can expect in the next recession. So choice (A) is out of scope.

SravnaTestPrep wrote:

Choice B in my opinion is not as solid because it doesn't automatically imply that the students who were studying at private schools during stronger economy would join the government funded schools during recession because as mentioned above there are two factors that weigh in students decision, being quality of education and cost of education. So if the private schools were markedly higher in the quality of education that they offer we would see little number of students moving to government funded schools during recession.

So to me choice A appears to strengthen the argument better.

Again, quality of education is out of scope here. There are a dozen other factors parents weigh while selecting a school but none of the others are relevant to our argument. The argument only deals with cost and student-teacher ratio. Option B very clearly states that during strong times, many kids are attending private schools which charge substantial fees. Also, since it is given that jobs are harder to come by in recession, it is possible that some people might be forced to use free-of-cost govt schools.

Let us first agree that during recession the number of teachers is lower than during a period of strong economy. The argument is based on that fact. Let us also use the common sense logic that the number of kids going to school is not going to vary significantly from one year to another within a short period. So considering all the n number of possibilities we can reasonably reach the above conclusion. So there is the cost factor and n number of other factors. If during recession the n number of factors weighed more or equally in favor of the private schools as in a period of strong economy, then the cost factor is being overlooked and therefore there are enough well to do parents who can send their kids to private schools during recession. Your argument that since parents would be out of job and so don't send their kids to private schools is not strong. This is because during previous recession also as we can infer, the parents did not change their kids from private schools to government funded schools because of cost. So if the number of kids going to private schools is 25% during strong economy it was also about the same during the recession.

While choice B considers only the cost factor, choice A implies that the other factors are important and along with the cost factor will strengthen the argument even strongly. In fact in the case of choice B, cost factor may be pitted against the other factors.

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

01 Feb 2013, 01:35

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eybrj2 wrote:

In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession because many businesses cut back operations. However, any future recessions in Vargonia will probably not reduce the availability of teaching jobs at government-funded schools. This is because Vargonia has just introduced a legal requirement that education in government-funded schools be available, free of charge, to all Vargonian children regardless of the state of the economy, and that current student-teacher ratios not be exceeded.

Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

A. The current student-teacher ratio at Vargonia’s government-funded schools is higher than it was during the most recent period of economic recession.

B. During recent periods when the Vargonian economy has been strong, almost 25 percent of Vargonian children have attended privately funded schools, many of which charge substantial fees.

C. Nearly 20 percent more teachers are currently employed in Vargonia’s government-funded schools than had been employed in those schools in the period before the last economic recession.

D. Teachers in Vargonia’s government-funded schools are well paid relative to teachers in most privately funded schools in Vargonia, many of which rely heavily on part-time teachers.

E. During the last economic recession in Vargonia, the government permanently closed a number of the schools that it had funded.

Hi,

As I see, already there are two experts active on this thread, I am not sure if I am going to add much value to the discussion. But let me try.

When I read this passage, one thing that struck me was the underlined part: "However, any future recessions in Vargonia will probably not reduce the availability of teaching jobs at government-funded schools". So, the conclusion is not talking about the next recession or one particular recession; it is about all recessions to come. Therefore, any option statement which only talks about just one or two recessions is not going to support the general trend predicted in the conclusion.

The correct option has to give pointers to all the future recessions or provide a trend that has been generally followed in the past, which we can assume to hold in the future also.

Eliminate options A, C and E right away

Therefore, when I went to the options with this understanding in mind, I could easily eliminate options A, C and E since these three options just compare two economic recession - I am looking for a trend.

Option D is so out of context.

Option B is what I am looking for. It talks about "recent periods", not one period but a number of periods. So, it is talking about a trend. Now, what is the trend? The trend is that in strong economic conditions, a large number of children study in private schools, which charge "substantial fees". So, we can easily assume that the number of students at public schools will not decrease; it should rather increase. Therefore, the job availability of teaching jobs will likely not reduce.

Hope this helps

Thanks,
Chiranjeev

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

01 Feb 2013, 02:14

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egmat wrote:

eybrj2 wrote:

In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession because many businesses cut back operations. However, any future recessions in Vargonia will probably not reduce the availability of teaching jobs at government-funded schools. This is because Vargonia has just introduced a legal requirement that education in government-funded schools be available, free of charge, to all Vargonian children regardless of the state of the economy, and that current student-teacher ratios not be exceeded.

Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

A. The current student-teacher ratio at Vargonia’s government-funded schools is higher than it was during the most recent period of economic recession.

B. During recent periods when the Vargonian economy has been strong, almost 25 percent of Vargonian children have attended privately funded schools, many of which charge substantial fees.

C. Nearly 20 percent more teachers are currently employed in Vargonia’s government-funded schools than had been employed in those schools in the period before the last economic recession.

D. Teachers in Vargonia’s government-funded schools are well paid relative to teachers in most privately funded schools in Vargonia, many of which rely heavily on part-time teachers.

E. During the last economic recession in Vargonia, the government permanently closed a number of the schools that it had funded.

Hi,

As I see, already there are two experts active on this thread, I am not sure if I am going to add much value to the discussion. But let me try.

When I read this passage, one thing that struck me was the underlined part: "However, any future recessions in Vargonia will probably not reduce the availability of teaching jobs at government-funded schools". So, the conclusion is not talking about the next recession or one particular recession; it is about all recessions to come. Therefore, any option statement which only talks about just one or two recessions is not going to support the general trend predicted in the conclusion.

The correct option has to give pointers to all the future recessions or provide a trend that has been generally followed in the past, which we can assume to hold in the future also.

Eliminate options A, C and E right away

Therefore, when I went to the options with this understanding in mind, I could easily eliminate options A, C and E since these three options just compare two economic recession - I am looking for a trend.

Option D is so out of context.

Option B is what I am looking for. It talks about "recent periods", not one period but a number of periods. So, it is talking about a trend. Now, what is the trend? The trend is that in strong economic conditions, a large number of children study in private schools, which charge "substantial fees". So, we can easily assume that the number of students at public schools will not decrease; it should rather increase. Therefore, the job availability of teaching jobs will likely not reduce.

Hope this helps

Thanks,
Chiranjeev

Something that strengthens the argument should add useful additional knowledge other than what is common sense knowledge. In my opinion choice B offers no useful additional information because if there are private schools some parents would indeed send their children to the private schools and cost is indeed generally a factor. This is common sense knowledge just as the knowledge that public schools charge lower fees.

Anyway the fact that 25% of students in recent periods have always attended private schools during strong economic period may mean two things:

1) They never left the private school during recession
2) All who left during recession to the public schools returned to the private schools after recession.

In the second case, cost factor would have weighed in. In the first case, factors other than cost would have weighed in. How can you decide which one is stronger?

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

01 Feb 2013, 02:58

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SravnaTestPrep wrote:

Something that strengthens the argument should add useful additional knowledge other than what is common sense knowledge. In my opinion choice B offers no useful additional information because if there are private schools some parents would indeed send their children to the private schools and cost is indeed generally a factor. This is common sense knowledge just as the knowledge that public schools charge lower fees.

I think here we are moving in an area where a number of students have doubts. The area is "what is common sense knowledge". Well, I am not going into what is considered common sense in GMAT, generally; however, within the given context option B is certainly not a common sense knowledge.

Just because there are some private schools, would some parents always send their children to them, even if:
- the public education is completely free
-private schools charge substantial fees
-recession is going on

And again option B doesn't only say 'some' children go to private schools, it says "25%" of the children, which means 1 in every 4 children, which is substantial given that public education is free and private schools charge "substantial fees".

Can we consider above information as common sense? I think not.

SravnaTestPrep wrote:

Anyway the fact that 25% of students in recent periods have always attended private schools during strong economic period may mean two things:

1) They never left the private school during recession
2) All who left during recession to the public schools returned to the private schools after recession.

In the second case, cost factor would have weighed in. In the first case, factors other than cost would have weighed in. How can you decide which one is stronger?

I would say a case between these two extremes is more probable i.e. where some students move from private schools to govt. funded schools. You are right that it's hard to support one case over the other. The most probable case would be somewhere in between. This case would strengthen our conclusion - because for more students, more teachers would need to be hired.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Chiranjeev

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

01 Feb 2013, 06:00

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egmat wrote:

SravnaTestPrep wrote:

Something that strengthens the argument should add useful additional knowledge other than what is common sense knowledge. In my opinion choice B offers no useful additional information because if there are private schools some parents would indeed send their children to the private schools and cost is indeed generally a factor. This is common sense knowledge just as the knowledge that public schools charge lower fees.

I think here we are moving in an area where a number of students have doubts. The area is "what is common sense knowledge". Well, I am not going into what is considered common sense in GMAT, generally; however, within the given context option B is certainly not a common sense knowledge.

Just because there are some private schools, would some parents always send their children to them, even if:
- the public education is completely free
-private schools charge substantial fees
-recession is going on

And again option B doesn't only say 'some' children go to private schools, it says "25%" of the children, which means 1 in every 4 children, which is substantial given that public education is free and private schools charge "substantial fees".

Can we consider above information as common sense? I think not.

SravnaTestPrep wrote:

Anyway the fact that 25% of students in recent periods have always attended private schools during strong economic period may mean two things:

1) They never left the private school during recession
2) All who left during recession to the public schools returned to the private schools after recession.

In the second case, cost factor would have weighed in. In the first case, factors other than cost would have weighed in. How can you decide which one is stronger?

I would say a case between these two extremes is more probable i.e. where some students move from private schools to govt. funded schools. You are right that it's hard to support one case over the other. The most probable case would be somewhere in between. This case would strengthen our conclusion - because for more students, more teachers would need to be hired.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Chiranjeev

Dear Chiranjeev,

The reality is that parents do send their kids to private schools. We do know that private schools charge substantial fees. Also we are talking about a period when the economy is strong.

Regarding choice B, I mentioned the two scenarios because they fit the information given in that choice that each year about the same percentage of students go to the private schools during a strong economy. You cannot choose something in between because that would not be reflecting the truth given in choice B.

As a matter of fact the first case I mentioned in my previous post would actually weaken the argument.

B

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

06 Apr 2014, 11:28

OA is debatable and vulnerable to many assumptions.

We are just assuming that in recession because of financial burden people will move their kids to govt schools... and if I add further one more assumption that most of the poor parents wont be able to afford to send their kids to even govt schools during recession then in that case this student-teacher ratio may come down... overall we are just trying to fit option B in the shoe of OA..

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

28 Mar 2017, 23:40

hello expert can you explain , how do we eliminate option D

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

19 Sep 2017, 11:36

ludwigfraboulet wrote:

The answer is B, because during the recession, children will switch from school privately fund which charge substantial fee to school free of charge fund by the government, so the ratio student to teacher will increase, and provoke more need in term of teacher.

how did you get this info from the argument

children will switch from school privately fund to school fund by the government.(It is no where mentioned.)

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

26 Sep 2017, 08:43

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mbaprep2016 wrote:

ludwigfraboulet wrote:

The answer is B, because during the recession, children will switch from school privately fund which charge substantial fee to school free of charge fund by the government, so the ratio student to teacher will increase, and provoke more need in term of teacher.

how did you get this info from the argument

children will switch from school privately fund to school fund by the government.(It is no where mentioned.)

We are told that when the economy is strong, almost 25% of children attend privately funded schools. Although not specifically stated, we can infer that when the economy is not strong, that percentage would decrease and more children would attend government-funded schools.

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

01 Jul 2018, 07:27

i marked option C as the answer and rejected option B on the basis that
here we are considering that private school wont reduce the fees in any case but how can we be so sure about that because a person will be ready to reduce the fees rather than having a school with no students
what if private school also reduces their fees in case of recession than kids of the people who are affected wont have to change their school.
kindly guide me where i am wrong, whether i have missed a critical part of the premise

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

15 Jul 2018, 00:46

Hope your preparation is going well.
Let us try to understand the argument.
To attempt CR questions, one should follow the following steps.
1. Read the question stem- This is important as this gives clarity to understand what the question intends to ask. It is a strengthening question.
2. Work the argument, here the conclusion is any future recessions in Vargonia will not reduce the availability of the teaching jobs.
The premise of the argument is Vargonia has just introduced a legal requirement that education in government-funded schools is available, free of charge, to all Vargonian children regardless of the state of the economy and that current student-teacher ratios not be exceeded.
3. Predict the answer
The correct answer will try to justify the claim that the jobs are not going to reduce in Vargonia. Since the student-teacher ratio should remain intact, jobs can only reduce if the number of students in government schools decreases. Any answer choice which is able to establish that the number of students will not decrease will help to support the claim.
4. The last step is to eliminate the incorrect choices and reach to the right answer.
A. The discussion of previous recession is out of scope.
B. Is the correct answer as per our prediction of what the answer should do.
C. Choice C does not help us to establish the fact that teachers in government schools will not be affected by the recession.
D. This answer choice is out of scope.
E. Again what happened during the last economic recession has nothing to do with this one. This answer choice is also out of scope.
Hope it helps. Consistency is the key to crack the exam.
All the best!!
PythaGURUS Faculty Team

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

16 Jan 2019, 04:06

A simple example for those still having some confusion -

Notice two important things :
- future recessions not reduce the availability of teaching jobs in GFS
- current student-teacher ratios not be exceeded

Now, assume that -
Currently Student : Teacher = 3 : 1
60 students and 20 teaching jobs are available.

What if in some case the number of students reduce?
Remember we need the ratio to be the same legally!
So imagine students reduced to 30 students and to maintain ratio the teaching jobs have to reduce to 10!

The above scenario completely destroys the argument! So basically we need to remove such a situation or something related to it.

Yes B is not going all out and saying that all those 25% students will come to the GFS, but atleast it gives some hope that some students might come to GFS or that the chance of the GFS students leaving to private schools is less!

How to eliminate other options-

A) The current student-teacher ratio at Vargonia's government-funded schools is higher than it was during the most recent period of economic recession. This does not really say much about the jobs. Okay so the ratio is high, but will they be able to maintain the number of jobs?

C) Nearly 20 percent more teachers are currently employed in Vargonia's government-funded schools than had been employed in those schools in the period before the last economic recession. Notice that we are clearly talking about what happens in case of future recession.

D) Teachers in Vargonia's government-funded schools are well paid relative to teachers in most privately funded schools in Vargonia, many of which rely heavily on part-time teachers. Okay good for the teachers. But will they be able to hold their jobs?

E) During the last economic recession in Vargonia, the government permanently closed a number of the schools that it had funded. Again, who cares about the old recessions?

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Re: In general, jobs are harder to get in times of economic recession [#permalink]

16 Jan 2019, 04:06

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