Most universities today offer students a more in-depth and cosmopolitan education than ever before. Until recently, f...

Ravy on December 2, 2015

Can you please explain this?

Mehran on December 3, 2015

Thank you both for your questions. To correctly answer this Strengthen question, we need to first examine the stimulus carefully. It is an argument, the conclusion of which is the first sentence: "Most universities today offer students a more in-depth and cosmopolitan education than ever before." What support is offered for this assertion? Two factual premises are provided: (1) until recently, most university history courses required only textbooks that hardly mentioned Africa or Asia or indigenous peoples; and (2) history courses at most universities are no longer limited in this way.

All right. That conclusion does not necessarily follow from those premises, does it? The premises are about assigned textbooks for history courses, but the conclusion is a lot broader--it's about the quality of university education overall.

Note that this often happens on the LSAT--always pay very close attention to the exact scope of the conclusion. The LSAT writers are adept at subtly shifting topics to confuse students. Don't let that happen to you.

We need a premise that connects the two given premises and the conclusion in the stimulus.

Answer choice (C) does just this. Notice how it connects the quality of university history course textbooks to the quality, overall, of students' university education. If answer choice (C) is true, and if it is added to the stimulus, the conclusion follows logically from the premises, all taken together.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

ariella on April 19, 2017

Why is E incorrect?

Mehran on April 22, 2017

@ariella the problem with (E) is that it is irrelevant.

The fact that "university students who in their history courses are required only to read textbooks covering the history of a single culture will not get an in-depth and cosmopolitan education from these courses alone" has no impact on this argument.

This argument is about culturally inclusive textbooks and the impact on the overall education provided by most universities today. So it is possible that students in the courses set forth in (E) take other courses that give them the in-depth and cosmopolitan education, but even if they do not, the last sentence of the stimulus concedes that this argument does not apply to all universities, i.e. "the history courses at MOST universities no longer display such limitations."

Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

yuetngan on August 27, 2020

B and C were debatable when selecting the answer choices. I can see how C ties the additional premise to the conclusion, but B also works, doesn't it?

Is C more correct than B because there is common language in the answer choice?