Most graduates of art schools go on to support themselves

I was distracted and picking E, but I fully understand what kind of answer I need. C is surely the correct one

[quote="heyholetsgo"]Most graduates of art schools go on to support themselves with a variety of odd jobs that have little or nothing to do with the graduates’ artistic training. This has led to major doubts regarding how well the art schools are preparing their students for careers in art.

Premise: Most of art schools grads have to do little jobs to support themselves. Jobs have nothing to do with art.
Conclusion: The quality of education at art schools is not up to the level.
Assumption: Professional employment is the only purpose of arts schools and the only standard to be used to judge the quality of education at art schools

A: The curricula of most art schools tend to reflect the needs of the art world.
Strengthens it.

B:There are some graduates of art schools who go on to careers within the art world.
Well, there are some good cases, but the majority, evidently, are bad cases, according to the stem .
Strengthens it.

C:The purpose of an art school education is to ensure that students will be able to secure jobs in their fields.
That's the assumption

D:People who intend to earn their livings in the field of art choose to go to art school to increase the quality of their work.
Correct. It introduces the new possible purpose of art schools, and an alternative measure of education quality that can be or should be used to judge art schools.

E:Students attend art schools with the intention of earning their livings in the art field.
Strengthens. It indirectly suggests that arts schools should be judged according to their graduate employment numbers in industry.

You've identified a conclusion here that I don't see in the stem. The stem never says that 'the quality of education' is poor at art schools. The stem says something far more specific: art schools are not 'preparing their students for careers in art'. Identifying the answer here hinges on correctly identifying the conclusion. I said above that I think it's a bad question, because you might reasonably interpret the conclusion in different ways. If, however, you take the conclusion to be that 'art schools are not preparing their students for careers in art', then E is the only answer which makes any logical sense. We have evidence: art school students aren't getting jobs in art. We have a conclusion: it's the schools' fault. That's not an airtight argument; it might be the students' fault. We need to know that the students actually want to get jobs in art, and not some other field. If all of the art school students only want to become astronauts or chefs, then the fact that they don't get jobs in art tells us nothing about how well art schools have prepared them for art careers; the students were never going to get jobs in art no matter how well the school did.

C is a perfectly good answer if instead you interpret the conclusion to be that generally 'art schools aren't doing a very good job'. That's just not how I interpret the conclusion here; the conclusion to my reading seems specifically about how well students are trained for careers, and not about how good art schools are in general.

I'd add further that there are other problems with the wording of this question. We're asked to 'strengthen the author’s criticism of art schools', but the author never makes any criticism of art schools. Instead the passage says that there are 'doubts' about art schools, but the passage never says who has those doubts - it certainly isn't clear whether the author shares those doubts, or whether the author is simply reporting doubts that other people have. All in all, it's a very poor question, and is even worse if the official answer is C.

I like the strengthen questions. You just have to separate the wheat (conclusion) from the chaff (premise) - and then find the underlying assumption and match it with the choices!

Here,
Premise:
Most graduates of art schools go on to support themselves with a variety of odd jobs that have little or nothing to do with the graduates’ artistic training.
Conclusion:
This has led to major doubts regarding how well the art schools are preparing their students for careers in art.
Assumption:
How well an art school prepares its students can be judged by the number of students getting jobs relevant to their artistic training..

So the purpose of an art school must be help its students get jobs pertaining to art.

C is a direct pre-phrase of this assumption.

E is incorrect because it states the assumption from students point of view. The argument is about art schools, not students.

Hope this helps

When you begin a sentence with 'so', 'thus' or 'therefore', you're stating a conclusion, not an assumption. You seem to have confused the two. I also don't know how you've reached, from the premises, the conclusion that 'the purpose of an art school must be help its students get jobs pertaining to art'. I can illustrate why this is not a logical deduction with a different example:

The average GMAT scores of undergraduate students in astrophysics are 100 points higher than the average GMAT score of all test takers. Therefore undergraduate astrophysics programs provide good GMAT preparation.

Could you conclude from this that the *purpose* of undergraduate astrophysics programs it to prepare people for the GMAT? Of course not. And what would we want to know to evaluate the argument? We'd clearly want to know something about the students. Perhaps they are already more intelligent than average, and that's the reason they do better on the GMAT; it may have nothing at all to do with what they learn in their astrophysics course. In the question above, you ruled out E:



but the students are precisely what we want to know about in this question: are they trying to get jobs in art or not? If not, then of course they don't get jobs in art, no matter how well the school did training them. That's why the answer is E.

The question is based on what I call the intention/results fallacy, a logical fallacy that you often encounter in art criticism. When someone does something (teaches a course, makes a film, whatever), what he or she is *trying* to do (her 'purpose') need not have any relationship with what he or she *actually* achieves. To confuse someone's intentions with his or her results is a logical error. To give one example, we've all seen horror films that were so ridiculous they seemed more like comedies; that the filmmaker's purpose was to create a scary movie does not, logically, mean that the filmmaker actually *did* make a scary movie. The filmmaker's intentions are irrelevant; it's the result that matters. The art school question is entirely about results (students aren't getting jobs in art --> therefore the school failed to prepare them for jobs in art). Whether the school was *trying* to prepare them for jobs is logically irrelevant, so C is not a good answer. If the source claims C is the OA, then it's not a good question.

E is definitely not the answer. It's a pretty easy C, IMO.

C weakens, E strengthens

C:The purpose of an art school education is to ensure that students will be able to secure jobs in their fields.
This weakens the argument saying the main purpose of art school is to prepare the students to get the jobs and making them strong to ensure the job that students want. It means art schools are achiveing what they have to.


E:Students attend art schools with the intention of earning their livings in the art field.
This is strengthening the conclusion saying art schools are failure, where students come to art schools to persue career in art, but after course they go for jobs no way related to art. It means the knowledge they get in schools is not sufficient or of mere waste in getting right jobs so students had to search for odd jobs.

C is strengthening. The passage states that Most graduates of art schools go on to support themselves with a variety of odd jobs that have little or nothing to do with the graduates’ artistic training. The purpose of the art schools is to ensure that students will be able to secure jobs in their fields. Thus school wants the students to get job in their fields, but the students are getting jobs in some other fields. Hence the art schools are NOT achieving what they want to.

E is out of scope. The argument is about whether the art schools are able to prepare the students properly - it does not matter for the argument what the students intend; the argument is about what the schools intend.

Official Explanation:

Conclusion: This has led to major doubts regarding how well the art schools are preparing their students for careers in art.
Premise: Most graduates of art schools go on to support themselves with a variety of odd jobs that have little or nothing to do with the graduates’ artistic training.
Assumption: There’s no other way to interpret the facts. The fact that most art students end up in careers having little to do with their training means that art schools are not preparing their graduates well.

The word strengthen in the question stem indicates that this is a strengthen question. The author concludes that there are doubts regarding how well the art schools are preparing their students for careers in art, based on the evidence that most graduates of art schools go on to…jobs that have little or nothing to do with the graduates’ artistic training. Insofar as the author takes this evidence to mean that art schools may not be preparing their students well, the argument exhibits the interpretation of evidence pattern.

The standard assumption involved in the interpretation of evidence pattern is that there’s no other way to interpret the facts. Because this is a strengthen question, the correct answer will support the assumption that there is no other way to interpret the evidence other than questioning how well art schools…are preparing their students for careers in art. Evaluate the answer choices, looking for one that bolsters this interpretation.

Choice A: No. This choice weakens the author’s criticism. If The curricula of…art schools…reflect[s] the needs of the art world, then this suggests that art school graduates are well prepared by their schools for careers in art.

Choice B: No. This choice weakens the author’s criticism. If some graduates…go on to careers within the art world, then this supports the idea that these graduates are well prepared for careers in art.

Choice C: Correct. This choice reinforces the author’s interpretation of the evidence. If The purpose of an art school education is to ensure that graduates…secure jobs in the arts, and yet most graduates end up in jobs that have little to do with…artistic training, then this supports the idea that art schools are not preparing their students well.

Choice D: No. Whether people…choose to go to art school to increase the quality of their work is out of scope. The reason that people choose to go to art school has no bearing on the question of whether art schools do well preparing them for careers in art.

Choice E: No. The intention of art school students is out of scope. The idea that art students have the intention of earning their livings in the art field has no bearing on the question of whether art schools do well preparing them to do so.

The correct answer is choice C.