PrepTest 118, Section 4, Question 15
The cost of a semester's tuition at a(51 more words not shown)
Each of the following, if(9 more words not shown)
- AFaculty salaries at(10 more words not shown)
- BThe number of(21 more words not shown)
- CThe cost of(14 more words not shown)
- DThe university awards(20 more words not shown)
- EThe university has(18 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The price per course stayed the same. Did the number of courses stay the same?
Tuition depends on both. If students now have to take more courses, an unchanged course price could still produce a larger bill. Perhaps courses carry fewer units toward the requirements, forcing students to enroll in more of them. That's one possible explanation, not something we've been told happened.
Or the tuition bill might be unchanged while students have less money available. An economic downturn could cost them their part-time jobs. They could then struggle to pay an amount they used to afford.
What we’re looking for
We need the exception: four choices help explain why students can no longer afford tuition, and one doesn't. Keep the two routes separate. An answer could increase the total bill without raising the course price, or it could reduce the money students have to pay that bill.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Higher faculty salaries don't tell us why these students can no longer pay their tuition. It's tempting to supply a chain: the university pays more, so it charges students more. But the passage explicitly says the price per course hasn't risen. We can't invent that price increase to make A relevant.
The university might pay the additional salaries from some other source. A gives us no change in students' course loads, financial resources, or other expenses that would explain their difficulty paying.
- B
More required courses means a larger tuition bill at the same price per course. Suppose a course costs $1,000. Three courses cost $3,000; four cost $4,000. The rate can stay fixed while the total rises. B directly supplies the first kind of explanation we considered.
- C
Students could be spending more on rent, food, and other living expenses, leaving less for tuition. The university wouldn't have to raise its prices for its students to find the bill harder to afford. C explains a change in their ability to pay.
- D
A new student may initially afford tuition with a scholarship, then lose that scholarship by failing to maintain the required grades. The same tuition could become unaffordable once the assistance disappears. D doesn't say this happened to everyone; it supplies a mechanism that could explain the reported change for many students.
- E
Students who previously held those part-time jobs could lose that income when the positions are converted to full-time jobs for nonstudents. Less income would make tuition harder to afford even with no increase in the course price. This is the loss-of-earnings route we considered while reading.
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