#18 - Pundit: For many high school graduates, attending

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

This Flaw in the Reasoning question starts off with a pretty strong conclusion, that attending a university would be "no help" for folks interested in getting a corporate job. No help at all? That's a pretty extreme claim, and it is going to need extreme support in order to be considered valid.

The support the author gives is far from extreme. We are told that many high school graduates already possess the traits that corporations value most. Does that mean that going to a university would be no help at all? Hardly! Corporations may place the most importance on those intangible traits listed, but that doesn't mean that's the be all and end all of their hiring process. Maybe they also want to know how you compare to others with similar traits? Maybe they want you to also have certain skills and knowledge that can only be acquired in a university? Maybe they also want to see that you maintained those traits for a number of years after growing up and leaving home?

In short, the author's flaw is that he assumes that the most valued traits are the only traits that matter, and that nothing more of value can be acquired at a university.

Answer A: It's not a flaw to fail to consider the traits that university graduates may have, only to believe that they have no other traits that a corporation might want and that a high school graduate might not have.

Answer B: This is the correct answer. This is a match for our prephrase, in that the author has ignored the possibility of universities imparting some additional, valuable traits beyond the ones listed.

Answer C: Out author did not assume anything about corporations hiring only people with the listed traits, just that those are the traits they value the most. Since the author made no such assumption, there was no need for him to justify it.

Answer D: This could be a distracting and tempting answer, if the reader focuses on the idea that universities have no value at all. That's not what the author said, though - he limited his argument to the realm of getting corporate jobs. Since he made no argument about anything other than corporate jobs, it's not a flaw to fail to consider other reasons for attending a university.

Answer E: There's nothing in the argument to suggest that our author thinks that those valued traits can or must be acquired through study. It could very well be that he thinks they come naturally as part of the maturation process, or through coaching, or that they are acquired by intravenous injection for all we know. As our author does not take this for granted, this is not his flaw.

[LSAT1802017]

So according to the Powerscore method, since the stimulus has a "rogue" word in the conclusion ("attending a university"), this should be a Supporter model.
However, the author assumes that the most valued attributes are SUFFICIENT in order for high school graduates to get a corporate job. In this sense, Isn't this argument a Defender since the author assumes NO OTHER attributes are required to get a corporate job? How would you classify this argument? Thank you so much!

[James Finch]

Hi LSAT,

It sounds like you may be confusing the Powerscore approach to Assumption questions with the approach to Flaw questions. Here, the stimulus seems to make either the Defender assumption that the only required prerequisites for obtaining a corporate job are the stated attributes that corporations value most in potential employee (initiative, flexibility and the ability to solve practical problems), or the Supporter assumption that attending university does not give students these attributes.

But this is a Flaw question, so we are only concerned that the stimulus does not prove that if a potential employee has the "most valued" attributes, they will automatically be hired by a corporation, and there is nothing that attending a university could do to make that more or less likely.