#3 - Educator: If there is a crisis in education today, it

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True. The correct answer choice is (D)

The educator in this stimulus complains about the quality of modern education, considering that, according to the author, serious learning has been reduced to degrees which in some cases can be earned without ever learning much of value.

Answer choice (A): While the educator asserts that such degrees can sometimes be meaningless, there is no implication that institutions are increasingly granting meaningless credentials.

Answer choice (B): Like answer choice (A), this answer choice can be ruled out by one word: “easier.” The author is concerned about the possibility of earning meaningless credentials, but does not assert that it has become easier to do so.

Answer choice (C): This answer choice is far too broad; the author is concerned about meaningless credentials, but would not suggest that the granting of degrees and certificates be stopped altogether.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. According to the educator, one can earn the referenced credentials by “plodding through courses without ever learning anything of value.”

Answer choice (E): The author makes no such assertion regarding the benefit of education, so this answer choice fails the Fact Test.

[DYLANPQ]

I was torn between B and D and I went with D. The reasoning I went with this is because if it is easier to complete the course work without learning anything, then their degree/credentials are meaningless because they dud not learn anything in the process. I don't understand how the word easier completely eliminates this answer is if is easier for the student to do something without learning the material, doesn't that mean that they did not learn what they were supposed to, and their degree is meaningless.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Dylan,

This is a must be true question. So if answer choice (B) is correct, we should see in the stimulus where it is easier for students to get degrees now. However, we don't see a comparison over time in the stimulus. We can't say it's easier to complete coursework without learning anything of value because we don't know how easy that was in the past. We can't use a comparative word where the stimulus does not give us a comparison. That's why we need to eliminate answer choice (B).

Hope that helps!