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Watson Glaser Practice Test clarification

Hi, I was wondering whether anyone could help me with the differences between these two arguments:

Should university education be free to all students?

No. Too much education can lead to over-qualification, and therefore unemployment.

Yes, Having a highly qualified workforce ensures high levels of employee productivity in organisations.

A is a weak argument while B is a strong argument but I can't see the difference between the two. Both of them don't relate back to free university education, they just talk about the pros/cons of qualification. I feel that both of them should be weak arguments.

Any advice? Thanks
Original post by carf
Hi, I was wondering whether anyone could help me with the differences between these two arguments:

Should university education be free to all students?

No. Too much education can lead to over-qualification, and therefore unemployment.

Yes, Having a highly qualified workforce ensures high levels of employee productivity in organisations.

A is a weak argument while B is a strong argument but I can't see the difference between the two. Both of them don't relate back to free university education, they just talk about the pros/cons of qualification. I feel that both of them should be weak arguments.

Any advice? Thanks


They do - by definition, free uni education would lead to more people taking up this opportunity, therefore you would have more highly educated people in the potential workforce.

The difference is this:

In A, there are two assumptions made, neither of which is necessarily correct. Assumption 1 is that free higher education leads to over-qualification. This is not necessarily the case because regardless of whether it's free, people may not proceed to qualify to a degree (eg. MA/PhD) above that required for their chosen profession. Assumption 2 is that too many well qualified or even over-qualified people (the latter being if you accept assumption 1) mean that there will be a direct correlation to unemployment (this is due to the use of the words 'and therefore'), which is not necessarily the case, though it may be true to an extent.

In B, there is still an assumption made about the correlation between one's level of education and their productivity, however this is more likely to be true than those made in A.

I'm pretty sure that's the logic behind the question, though having said that, I personally think both are technically bad answers, in that both make unsubstantiated assumptions (unless there is some longer text before the question which you haven't included in the post).

Hope that helps!

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