#5 - In defending the Hyperion School of Journalism from

[Oscarg104]

Hi, I would like a thorough explanation regarding this question, as I do not understand why I got this one wrong. My selected answer was B.

[James Finch]

Hi Oscar,

This is a weaken question, so we're looking for the answer choice that will make the conclusion less likely to be true. The conclusion here is that the school's journalism program isn't worthless, with the sole premise being that it places 2/3s of its graduates in internships or jobs in journalism. The immediate prephrase I see is "the jobs are entry-level/don't actually lead to careers."

Answer choice (A) immediately comes at a similar idea, if opposite direction, to my prephrase: if the majority of students already have careers in journalism, getting a job after graduating from the school isn't a particular accomplishment. Immediate contender.

Answer choice (B) has such a broad, undefined scope ("some," "necessary") that it neither helps nor hurts the argument. Loser.

Answer choice (C) is clearly irrelevant. Loser.

Answer choice (D) would, if anything, strengthen the argument. Loser.

Answer choice (E) is also irrelevant, as we don't care how selective the school is at choosing students. Loser.

So only (A) can work, and is the correct answer.

Hope this clears things up!

[ericj_williams]

Hi Oscar,

This is a weaken question, so we're looking for the answer choice that will make the conclusion less likely to be true. The conclusion here is that the school's journalism program isn't worthless, with the sole premise being that it places 2/3s of its graduates in internships or jobs in journalism. The immediate prephrase I see is "the jobs are entry-level/don't actually lead to careers."

Answer choice (A) immediately comes at a similar idea, if opposite direction, to my prephrase: if the majority of students already have careers in journalism, getting a job after graduating from the school isn't a particular accomplishment. Immediate contender.

Answer choice (B) has such a broad, undefined scope ("some," "necessary") that it neither helps nor hurts the argument. Loser.

Answer choice (C) is clearly irrelevant. Loser.

Answer choice (D) would, if anything, strengthen the argument. Loser.

Answer choice (E) is also irrelevant, as we don't care how selective the school is at choosing students. Loser.

So only (A) can work, and is the correct answer.

Hope this clears things up!

I don't think it's so much that's not an accomplishment (not of value), but establishing an alternate cause.

You are getting jobs because not because of our program (the value), you're getting jobs because you had prior experience.

[juliet-kamau@outlook.com]

Hello!

I initially chose AC B. Now I understand that "some" editors not regarding school as necessary is not as impactful as ALL editors thinking the same, but I still don't understand how AC A is right. For AC A, who says that these students didn't come from jobs to school to improve their skills and go back to get better jobs in the same industry?
I also think that AC B still weakens the argument somewhat, because at least some editors think school isn't that useful.
How can I better understand how AC A is right?

[Dana D]

Hey Juliet,

When you're looking at 'some' in arguments, ask yourself if it is effective if it meant 'one'. We know some can mean anything from 1 to all, which can result in vastly different interpretations of the argument.

In this case, if answer choice (B) meant one newspaper editor doesn't regard journalism school as necessary then that answer choice becomes much weaker. In comparison, answer choice (A) implies that more than half (so most) of the students already had jobs in journalism. If 65% of the graduates are now getting internships or jobs in journalism, it doesn't seem like the program is that good of a value. Maybe some of those graduates are getting better jobs in journalism, but that's not clear from the answer choice, and some students are getting internships, which is certainly a step down, so this one most seriously weakens the argument.

[Cflores17]

Hello I don't understand how D is a loser. If the school is similar in quality and content to other peer institutions how in the world does that strengthen the argument ?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Cflores,

It can be easy to get tripped up with what exactly we are trying to weaken in this argument.

The argument is that the journalism program at Hyperion School does have real value (i.e. it is not true that the program has little or no value).

We don't know for sure that Answer D strengthens the argument unless we assume that the programs of these peer institutions do have real value. If that were true, then the fact that Hyperion's program is similar in quality and content would suggest that it also has real value. However, it is possible that the programs of both Hyperion and its peer institutions are all completely worthless and have zero value.

Since we don't know whether the programs at these peer institutions have any real value, then we can't determine what effect this answer would have on the argument, which makes this answer wrong.

We are looking for an answer that shows that the journalism program at Hyperion School may in fact have little or no value. And the specific way that we want to do this is to show that the 65% job placement rate of the graduates that the dean uses does not necessarily prove that the program has value.

Answer A does this by showing that most of these graduates already have worked in the field, which calls into question whether the program itself actually helped any of the graduates in getting jobs.