With employer-paid training, workers have the

Hi GMATNinja
Conclusion: A competitor company would have to pay less for training an employee
if he is already trained by previous company for productivity.
I was not able to come up will with correct structure and eventually ended up marking C as OA thinking : if other institutes are offering less fees to employees to train them hence it can disprove that previous employer had to bear training expenses.
Can you help with my understanding?

Imo E
even if some employees leave the company which paid for their training , bulk of the employees still remain .
So value added is greater than the value lost , hence E is the answer.

straight E..

researchers say the employer aid training is pointless, but E says, even if workers switch jobs, they will have positive values gained by the previous employer, thus training is not pointless.
rest all options are out of scope.

Well CRs are very confusing for me to wrap my head around -- not sure when to take an extra leap of judgement and when to stick to the exact argument.

Here is the argument:
But some training experts object that if a trained worker is hired away by another firm, the employer that paid for the training has merely subsidized a competitor. They note that such hiring has been on the rise in recent years.

Looking strictly at the argument, it does not talk about "net value" from the investment in workers' training. It talks about "subsidizing" another competitor.
Now, even if E is to be true, the argument above is still valid -- you are potentially still subsidizing your competitors.

I guess, my question is, how do we extrapolate that the emphasis of the training experts argument is about "find net positive value of the investment" and not much about as competitive strategy (incentivizing competitors by supplying them with trained employees)?

You have to look at the implication of what is said.

"But some training experts object that if a trained worker is hired away by another firm, the employer that paid for the training has merely subsidized a competitor."

It implies loss of value to the trainer. That the employer who paid for training got no value. His money got used to just subsidise a competitor. That he himself did not get value for his money. The argument is written this way only to point out the irony. We don't really have much to do with the competitor angle.

Is this question from a new 18 guide?

Premise: With employer-paid training, workers have the potential to become more productive not only in their present employment but also in any number of jobs with different employers.

Conclusion: To increase the productivity of their workforce, many firms are planning to maintain or even increase their investments in worker training.

Counter Premise: But some training experts object that if a trained worker is hired away by another firm, the employer that paid for the training has merely subsidized a competitor. They note that such hiring has been on the rise in recent years.

We need to weaken the argument - So, we need to find a reason which would tell us why we should continue the training process, even if some employees leave the company.


Which of the following would, if true, contribute most to defeating the training experts’ objection to the firms’ strategy?

A. Firms that promise opportunities for advancement to their employees get, on average, somewhat larger numbers of job applications from untrained workers than do firms that make no such promise.[Out of Scope - We are not concerned with advancement to employees factor. We need to look for a reason to continue the training process. ]

B. In many industries, employees who take continuing-education courses are more competitive in the job market. [Whether they are competitive in the market or not is not our concern, because this cannot be the reason to continue training people.]

C. More and more educational and training institutions are offering reduced tuition fees to firms that subsidize worker training.[Out of context: Even if they are offering a discount, that does not mean that employees after getting trained won't leave the job. And since we are paying money to train, if the employee leaves, we are at a loss.]

D. Research shows that workers whose training is wholly or partially subsidized by their employer tend to get at least as much training as do workers who pay for all their own training. [This statement compares the amount of training, which is again not our concern, as we want to know what happens after training them?]

E. For most firms that invest in training their employees, the value added by that investment in employees who stay exceeds the value lost through other employees’ leaving to work for other companies[This gives us a reason why we should continue training. So, even if some employees leave, we know that those who are still working would add value which would compensate for those who have left. Thus, that should be a good enough reason to continue training.]

Correct Answer - E.

+E,.

Trained employers who stay give more value than the one's who leave the organization.

Even if few employee leave,its still more valuable.

PREMISE: Employer-paid training helps with present job and future jobs (with competing companies)
PREMISE: Many firms planning to invest in worker training
CONCLUSION (by some experts): Employer-paid training has the potential to be a waste of money (if the worker is hired by a competing company)

Our goal here is to find a premise that weakens the experts' conclusion

Let's check the answer choices While also reminding ourselves what the conclusion is...

A) This does not weaken the conclusion that employer-paid training has the potential to be a waste of money for the employer
B) This does not weaken the conclusion that employer-paid training has the potential to be a waste of money for the employer
C) This does not weaken the conclusion that employer-paid training has the potential to be a waste of money for the employer
D) This does not weaken the conclusion that employer-paid training has the potential to be a waste of money for the employer. It has nothing to do with the company's return on investment.
E) This DOES weaken the conclusion that employer-paid training has the potential to be a waste of money for the employer. This premise basically says, "Sure some employees might leave, but the ones who stay more than make up for the ones who leave."

Answer: E

Conclusion: Employer-paid training will not benefit as a trained employee may be hired by competitor or training will not be subsidized.
Assumption: Trained employees will leave before they get subsidized. or Company will not gain because of training in any other way.
Aim: We need to strengthen firms’ strategy

A. Firms that promise opportunities for advancement to their employees get, on average, somewhat larger numbers of job applications from untrained workers than do firms that make no such promise. - Out of focus. Job application basis is not discussed in the prompt.
B. In many industries, employees who take continuing-education courses are more competitive in the job market. - This does not strengthen firm strategy.
C. More and more educational and training institutions are offering reduced tuition fees to firms that subsidize worker training. - Irrelevant.
D. Research shows that workers whose training is wholly or partially subsidized by their employer tend to get at least as much training as do workers who pay for all their own training. - Out of focus.
E. For most firms that invest in training their employees, the value added by that investment in employees who stay exceeds the value lost through other employees’ leaving to work for other companies - Yes, this strengthens the firm's strategy and weakness the training experts’ objection.

I was confused by the wording of the sentence below

"But some training experts object that if a trained worker is hired away by another firm, the employer that paid for the training has merely subsidized a competitor."

To me this means that the training expert objects to the statement that if another firm hires a recently trained employee it is a waste of money. i.e. the expert believes in the value of training even though this would happen. This would align the training experts conclusion with the firm's strategy.

I don't see how the sentence above can be read to mean that the training expert is against the firm's strategy, if someone could clarify that would be awesome.

Thanks,
Matt

Matt,

This is a reading comprehension problem you are facing.

Read this again:
"... many firms are planning to maintain or even increase their investments in worker training. But some training experts object that if a trained worker is hired away by another firm, the employer that paid for the training has merely subsidized a competitor. "

training experts object - to what? to firms maintaining or increasing their investments in training.

What is their objection? that if a trained worker is hired away by another firm, the employer that paid for the training has merely subsidized a competitor.

So basically, training experts are saying that it is not a good idea to maintain or increase expenditure in training because you are in effect subsidising a competitor.

Note : Dont look at answer choices without forming pre thinking , 995 times you will fall in trap and end up marking wrong answer
Prethinking:
Argument relies on conclusion that if the company trains the employee in new technology, it will be loss to the company and gain to its competitors
we need the argument which weaken the conclusion, so we need some premise or logic which says investing in employers trainng will have some benefit which exceeds their loss to competitors

so now lets look at answer choices carefully

A. Firms that promise opportunities for advancement to their employees get, on average, somewhat larger numbers of job applications from untrained workers than do firms that make no such promise. irreleavent, are we bothered about job applications, of course not

B. In many industries, employees who take continuing-education courses are more competitive in the job market. -Okay, but it does not rlate to concluson , so out of scope

C. More and more educational and training institutions are offering reduced tuition fees to firms that subsidize worker training.-okay, but again out of scope

D. Research shows that workers whose training is wholly or partially subsidized by their employer tend to get at least as much training as do workers who pay for all their own training. -Agreed , but we are not concerned about how much training employers get, we are concerned about benefit from training

E. For most firms that invest in training their employees, the value added by that investment in employees who stay exceeds the value lost through other employees’ leaving to work for other companies- this is correct one and matched out prethinking

So OA :E

Asked: To weaken the conclusion of the argument as stated by the category of training experts who object.

Pre-thinking: This category of experts assumes that the cost of workers lost to competitors post training supersedes the benefit from training to workers who stick with the firm. Another assumption could be that the workers are willing to quit the firms which invest money in training them. For a weaken question, we need to find flaws in the assumptions.

Option analysis:
A) This is out of focus and doesn't comment on whether these workers are joining these firms with the sole purpose of getting trained and moving to other firms or whether there is any cost benefit analysis to the situation
B) Out of focus. We don't know if continuing education courses are same as worker training that the firms provides
C) We don't know if the reduced tuition is enough to compensate for workers lost after training. Additionally, the firms that subsidise training is completely taken out of context in this option and hence doesn't deliver a clear meaning
D) Out of focus
E) Correct! Matches our pre-thinking

I think VeritasKarishma is correct. The reason we know this is because of the keyword "merely".

E is the answer.The answer should weaken the trainer's point of losing investment in case of (lost trained) employees.
An answer implying the number to be smaller or disproportionate as compared to existing employee's count(employees contributng towards the company), should be correct.

E. For most firms that invest in training their employees, the value added by that investment in employees who stay exceeds the value lost through other employees’ leaving to work for other companies

This answer works best, I guess