Nursing schools cannot attract a greater number of able applicants than they currently do unless the problems of low ...

Ravi August 8, 2019

@BrandyL,

Great question.

This question is asking us what we can infer from the passage. We have
a series of conditional statements, so the best thing to do is to
diagram the stimulus and deduce as much as possible from there. Often
times, on these questions you can predict what the correct answer
choice will be if you figure out what can be figured out from the
conditional statements in the premises.

We have

Problems not solved - >not attract more applicants
not attract more applicants - >lower standards or shortage of nurses
shortage of nurses or lower standards - >not maintain quality

Notice how we diagram the first sentence as

Problems not solved - >not attract more applicants

The reason that we didn't negate the phrase "nursing schools cannot
attract a greater number of applicants" is because that is just one
part of the whole sentence. The whole sentence reads, "Nursing schools
cannot attract a greater number of able applicants than they currently
do unless the problems of low wages and high-stress working conditions
in the nursing profession are solved."

There are two main clauses in this sentence that are separated by and
'unless,' so we take the clause after 'unless, negate it, and make it
the sufficient condition.

Problems not solved - ->

Then, we take the other clause and put it in the necessary condition

Problems not solved - >not attract more applicants

Again, upon diagramming the whole stimulus, we have

Problems not solved - >not attract more applicants
not attract more applicants - >lower standards or shortage of nurses
shortage of nurses or lower standards - >not maintain quality

This all links together to form

Problems not solved - >not attract more applicants - >shortage of nurses
or lower standards - >not maintain quality

The inference the correct answer choice highlights will be something
in this chain.

(E) says, "The current high quality of health care will not be
maintained if the problems of low wages and high stress working
conditions in the nursing profession are not solved."

(E) translates to problems not solved - >not maintain quality.

This is the beginning and end of the chain we made, so this is
precisely the conclusion that we can draw from the premises. Thus, (E)
is the correct answer choice.

Doing work up front when examining the stimulus pays dividends in
allowing you to go through the answer choices quickly. (E) is clearly
correct based on our analysis, and all of the others fail to match up
with the conditional chain we've mapped out. Making that chain lets
you easily see why the wrong answers are wrong and why the right
answer is right.

Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any other questions!

Ravi August 8, 2019

@BrandyL,

Regarding the last sentence, the reason that we negated the way we did
is because we have two conditions in the sufficient condition (a
shortage of nurses or lowered entrance standards) and then we have
'cannot' in the second part of the sentence. 'Cannot' means that we
pick one of the clauses, negate it, and make it the necessary
condition.

shortage of nurses or lower standards - >not maintain quality

We could have also diagrammed the last sentence as

maintain quality - >no shortage of nurses and not lowered standards
(this is the contrapositive of the original statement)

For more information, I highly recommend reviewing our video lessons
on conditional logic indicators and chains, which will help you to
further familiarize yourself with the concepts. Let us know if you
have any questions!

BrandyL August 9, 2019

Thank you so much! Makes Sense!