PrepTest 144, Section 3, Question 4
James: Community colleges, by their very nature, work(70 more words not shown)
James's and Margaret's statements provide(18 more words not shown)
- AA primary goal(12 more words not shown)
- BMost universities adequately(12 more words not shown)
- CThe main reason(13 more words not shown)
- DIn a typical(12 more words not shown)
- EThe main reason(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What is the university trying to do? That's where James and Margaret split.
James says community colleges work to meet their communities' educational needs, while universities have different primary goals. We could imagine a university concentrating on research or drawing students from around the world. That would help us understand the distinction James has in mind, though he doesn't actually tell us what those other goals are.
Margaret directly pushes back: serving the local community is a primary goal of any university. She then points to students preparing for careers.
But why students attend and what the institution aims to do are separate questions. Students at two schools might both want jobs even if one school focuses on local education and the other focuses on research. And a university serving a broader area, such as a whole state, might still have a community-serving purpose. We don't need to settle how every real university works to identify these speakers' positions.
What we’re looking for
For the disagreement question, keep the claim narrow: is serving the community's educational needs a primary university goal? Margaret says yes. James says that the community-college goal is not shared by universities.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Margaret explicitly makes serving the local community a primary university goal. James says universities differ from community colleges in precisely this respect. This gives us a claim one speaker accepts and the other rejects.
- B
Having a goal doesn't mean achieving it adequately. A university could aim to serve its community and do a poor job, or benefit its community while pursuing some other main goal. Neither speaker tells us how well most universities perform. Their disagreement concerns the goal itself.
- C
Margaret says this, but James doesn't tell us why people choose to attend universities. His claim concerns the institutions' goals. He could agree that students mainly want career preparation while maintaining that universities primarily pursue something else.
- D
Neither speaker ranks the educational needs of a typical community. Margaret identifies a reason people attend college, which doesn't by itself establish the community's greatest educational need. James doesn't address that comparison either.
- E
Margaret says the main reason for attending either institution is career preparation. James gives us no position on that comparison. Saying the schools have different goals doesn't commit him to saying their students have different motives. We need disagreement from both speakers, not a statement made by only one.
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