The dean of computing must be respected by the academic staff and be competent to oversee the use of computers on cam...

Skylar April 26, 2020

@arla, happy to help!

(D) "All academics who hold doctoral degrees are respected by their academic colleagues."

The negation of this is "Not all academics who hold doctoral degrees are respected by their academic colleagues." The key here is that "all" is negated to "not all." Instead, you seem to have negated it to "no."

The correct negation does not make the argument fall apart, because there are still some academics with doctoral degrees who are respected. The passage explicitly tells us that "the only deans whom academics respect are those who hold doctoral degrees," so the argument does not need to rely on any assumptions.

(E) "Among this university's staff members with doctoral degrees, only those in the computer science department really know about computers."

You pose a good question- what if a professor in the English department really knows about computers? This is an important point and, in fact, is what (E) is trying to clarify. (E) tells us that only those in the computer science department really know about computers, which means that no professors in other departments do. This assumption must be true for the argument's logic to work. If it was not true and, say, an English professor really did know about computers, then the rest of the passage would fall apart. Therefore, (E) is an assumption on which the argument depends and is the correct answer.

Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any additional questions!