While the total enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools

Premise: While the total enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools in Sondland is one percent higher this academic year than last academic year, the number of teachers there increased by three percent.

Conclusion: the Sondland Education Commission's prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded.

In order to weaken the conclusion, we need to prove that for some reason there will be a shortage of teachers as early as next year.

Pre-thinking scenario A: What if the population of school students rises exponentially with respect to population of teachers in the next year
Pre-thinking scenario B: What if the population of teachers reduces drastically with respect to population of students in the next year

Option A: Out of scope
Talks about funding of school over a period of ten years. The argument does not mention any correlation between population of teachers/students and funding. Moreover, the period taken into consideration (10yrs) is significantly more than that in the argument (next academic year)

Option B: Out of scope/No affect
Relation between salary and inflation rate has no affect on teacher enrollment.

Option C: No affect
This option talks about a new ratio - teachers per pupil. While the argument provides info about % increase in student and teacher population, it does not give any fact related to CURRENT student or teacher population. Hence, we cannot determine the number of teachers next year.

Option D: No affect
This option talks about a past trend. The argument does not provide sufficient information whether the trend will continue in the future. Moreover, this option talks about numbers and the argument only mentions percentage.

Option E: Weakens
Aligns with Pre-thinking scenario B. Starting next year, the number of teachers graduating from Teacher training school will be affected. Hence, a teacher shortage can be predicted as early as next year.

Answer : E­

@Gmatninja, @GmatninjaTwo,

I think GMAC keeps its head always high by making things SOUND complicated than they really ARE. Is not Q stem simply- Which of the following, if true, would undermine author's claim? I approached this as a simple WEAKEN Q than questioning about implementing a program or questioning a prediction. Is this approach correct too?

adkikani, yes, this is basically a simple weaken question! The author claims that the prediction is unfounded, and we need an answer choice that weakens that claim.

Regardless of how you label the question type, what's important is that you understand the structure of the author's argument, as described in the post below. If you find an answer choice that weakens that argument, then you've found your answer!

Hello folks,

I went through all explanations listed above but still cannot understand why answer choice C is correct and not E?

No where in the passage it states "percent per pupil". In question it says just the percentage of teachers. No where in the question it states % of teachers per pupil. How can we assume that mandate in C will lead to shortage?

Hello experts,

I got this question wrong somehow. Can you please help me with this one?

In my opinion the passage says that:

1. 3% increase in number of teachers
2. 1% increase in number of students.
3. So, no shortage of teachers.

Now we need to weaken point 3. So we need to find an option which says something like there'll be shortage of teachers.

So how does C weaken?

C says that suppose there 50 teachers per pupil this year, so from next year we'll have 55 teachers per pupil. So how does it weaken?


Earlier I thought C would strengthen because there would be more teachers, and more teachers wouldn't mean shortage. But now I think C has no impact.

I am a bit confused with this one.

Thank you in advance!


VeritasKarishma GMATNinja AndrewN AjiteshArun
EducationAisle­

To correctly answer the question, we need a choice that answers the following:

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the claim that the prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded?

In other words, the choice will provide a reason to believe that there WILL be a teacher shortage.

(C) says the following:

C. A new law has mandated that there be ten percent more teachers per pupil in Sondland’s public schools next academic year than there were this academic year.

So, basically, what (C) says is that, regardless of how many teachers per pupil there are now, the schools will need 10 percent more teachers per pupil.

While we don't know for sure that that information means there will be a shortage, it does provides some reason to believe that there will be shortage, given that the passage says that the number of teachers at the schools has increased by only 3 percent.

Hi ashmit99,

Option C doesn't say that the schools will have 10% more teachers per pupil next year. Instead, it says that they'll need 10% more teachers per pupil next year. Let's take a look at C again:

Now, a law can mandate anything. Actually following through on that, however, is a different matter. Option C tells us that Sondland's public schools will need 10% more teachers next year if the number of students remains the same (they'll need even more teachers next year if the number of pupils goes up). The problem, of course, is that, given the 3% increase mentioned in the question, 10% (which is significantly more than 3%) looks like it could create some problems for Sondland's public schools.

GMATNinja MartyTargetTestPrep DmitryFarber

The passage tells us that students have increased by 1% and teachers by 3%, this year. How can we assume that the current ratio doesn't already constitute 10% more teachers per pupil? In other words, why do we need to assume that there are more students than teachers this academic year?

achloes

Answer choice C tells us that the teacher/student ratio needs to be 10% more than last year, not that we need 10% more teachers than students. From the information given, we can calculate the change from last year, even though we don't know anything about the actual numbers. If last year, the teacher/student ratio was t/s, this year it is 1.03t/1.01s. That's only about a 2% increase, so no matter what the numbers are, they haven't hit a 10% increase in the ratio, so they will need more teachers.

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