Critical Reasoning

The dean of computing must be respected by the academic staff and be competent to oversee the use of computers on campus. The only deans whom academics respect are those who hold doctoral degrees, and only someone who really knows about computers can competently oversee the use of computers on campus. Furthermore, the board of trustees has decided that the dean of computing must be selected from among this university's staff. Therefore, the dean of computing must be a professor from this university's computer science department.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

(A) Academics respect only people who hold doctoral degrees.

(B) All of this university's professors have obtained doctoral degrees.

(C) At this university, every professor who holds a doctoral degree in computer science really
knows about computers.

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

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

Need help to solve this question.

OA: E

Answer [spoiler]{E}[/spoiler]
use Negation Technique..
We need to negate the conclusion and show its false case.

Option {E} ....Only those in Computer science department do not know about computer.

So this kills the Fact in the Question Stem.

ceilidh.erickson wrote:We're given a set of necessary conditions that the new dean must have:
- respected by staff => has a PhD
- knows about computers
- must be on this university's staff

The conclusion is that the new dean must be a professor from this university's computer science department. So now we need to question whether those necessary conditions lead directly to this conclusion...
- does someone who has a PhD have to be a professor? It's possible that a janitor on the staff has a PhD
- does someone who knows about computers have to be in the computer science department? Couldn't people in other departments know about computers?

Sometimes the best way to find the assumptions is to play the "what if?" game. The assumptions here are that everyone with a PhD is working as a professor, and that only professors in the computer science department know about computers.

as theCode pointed out, the negation test is a good way to prove that E is correct.

How to eliminate C? Tks!