Critical Reasoning

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. If the pool of able applicants to nursing school does not increase beyond the current level, either the profession will have to lower its entrance standards, or there will soon be an acute shortage of nurses. It is not certain, however, that lowering entrance standards will avert a shortage. It is clear that with either a shortage of nurses or lowered entrance standards of the profession, the current high quality of health care cannot be maintained.

Which one of the following can be property inferred from the passage?

(A) If the nursing profession solves the problems of low wages and high-stress working conditions, it will attract able applicants in greater numbers than it currently does.
(B) The nursing profession will have to lower its entrance standards if the pool of able applicants to nursing school does not increase beyond the current level.
(C) If the nursing profession solves the problems of low wages and high-stress working conditions, high quality health care will be maintained.
(D) If the nursing profession fails to solve the problems of low wages and high-stress working conditions, there will soon be an acute shortage of nurses.
(E) 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.

Source: Aristotle CR
OA E

I am confused about the last two options, kindly someone help me!

Hi ddg.

While D and E seem similar, there is a key difference between the two answers.

There is a way out of D, but there is not a way out of E. So we can infer E but not D.

D says that there will be a shortage unless the wage and working conditions problems are solved, but is this really true? Actually the prompt provides information that leads to a slightly different conclusion. There's this, "either the profession will have to lower its entrance standards, or there will soon be an acute shortage of nurses."

So actually from what is said in the prompt we can infer that it is not necessarily the case that unless the wage and working condition problems are solved there will be a shortage. There is another way that a shortage might be averted.

E is different though. What E says is that if the problems are not solved, the current high quality of health care will not be maintained. This we can infer, because the prompt says that because of the problems, either there will be a shortage or the entrance standards have to be lowered, either of which will result in the high quality not being maintained. So, there is no way to maintain the quality of health care other than solving the wage and working conditions problems.

So that's the difference between D and E that makes E the correct answer.

Dear Sir, thank you for your reply. It indeed helped me cement my understanding... Also, I have a variant of the explanation. if you'd kindly tell me if this line of reasoning is correct, i'd be highly obliged:



Alright, from the information provided in the passage we know NS can't increase the no. of able candidates unless
*low wages
*stressful working conditions
aren't solved.

The passage doesn't talk about WHAT could happen IF these conditions are solved.... So, via this method, B, C and D can be ignored. Now coming to A and E

A: If problems are solved, more students will apply (no information in passage gives us this hierarchical showcase) (In the real world case, maybe YES, but in real world scenario, even D may be true...so ignore "real world" simulations)
E: the health standard wont be maintained because of the shortage of nurses (even exam standard can't help) ----> Shortage because of those two conditions. So this is directly related. and hence OA = E

I agree with your reasoning on A and C, but B and D are different from C. So I don't agree with lumping B, C, and D together.

Regarding your reasoning on E, it may be correct, but I don't really get what you are saying, though it seems to be that a shortage is unavoidable, which is not the case. A shortage is avoidable; it's a lowering of standards that is unavoidable. Maybe you just didn't make yourself clear though.

Dear Sir,

Ya i think probably I didnt put across my viewpoint clearly..what i meant to say was:

A ---> If the nursing profession solves (nothing is given in the passage as to what will happend is it solves the problem)

B ---> negated because the information provides us the fact that lowering entrance standard doesnt really help in the end, as it is not certain to have any impact on the acute shortage of able candidates

C ---> If the nursing profession solves the two problems, then health-care standard will be maintained. Nothing in the passage states so.

D ---> Here it states another reason for acute shortage of nurses... however, in the premise, it isn't clearly stated so. I also think it defers from what the passage wants to say: The meaning in the passage is - entrance exam standard should be lowered or there will soon be an acute shortage. Again it goes on to say that only by lowering the exam standard doesnt help curb the possible shortage. there may be other reasons, unstated. D provides us with one such possibility that doesnt relate to the Nursing Schools (the nurses already working in hospitals may leave because of low wages and stressful working conditions, and this is unrelated to the Nursing schools and their intake).

E ---> The health care quality can't be maintained with either a shortage or with a lowered standard of exam. It will not be maintained on account of low wages and stressful working conditions owing to many reasons:
1. No increase in application to NS causing shortage soon,
2. Nurses already working are leaving their jobs owing to these two hindrances.
So these two conditions cover both 1 and 2 which is in fact stated in the passage's last line ---> that with shortage or with lowered exam standard, health care standard can't be maintained.

Ok, A you have locked in.

B, you still don't have straight. The thing here is that there is alternative way to avert a shortage. They could solve the wage and working condition problems.

C, you nailed.

What you did in D is a key example of what you cannot be doing if you want to get CR questions right consistently.

What did you do? You started writing a story that is not supported by either the prompt or any information in the answer choice.

There is nothing said about nurses leaving the profession because of low wages. Really you are not given any information on why there would be a shortage. It could be that there are more sick people. It could be that nurses retire on a regular basis and there are not enough new nurses to replace them.

You really don't have a solid reason to say that a shortage will happen because of nurses' leaving because of low wages and stressful conditions.

In CR and RC, you have to be careful to stick with things that are directly supported by what's said in the prompt. Yes you can go beyond what is said in the prompt if what you say is directly supported by what is said in the prompt, but if you start just creating scenarios based on what might be, on some theory you have, or on what generally happens in the real world, you will be setting yourself up to get smoked right and left.

What you said about E is ok except that once again you added the unsupported idea that nurses already working are leaving or are expected to leave the profession because of the wage and working conditions problems.

Thank you so much Sir! This really helped me narrow down to the issues I am having with CR.

Also, I was wondering, as you said, don't add extra information from the real world, what do I do about choices that seem really similar? How do I correct this mistake that I am making?

Again, thank you so much! This post has really helped me

ddg wrote:Also, I was wondering, as you said, don't add extra information from the real world, what do I do about choices that seem really similar? How do I correct this mistake that I am making?

In CR, there is no substitute for really understanding the prompt and any unstated assumptions and connections therein.

When reading and assessing answer choices, you need to be careful to make only logical connections and to not start running beyond logically supported ideas in an attempt to come up with a way to differentiate the answer choices.

When you get down to two answer choices that seem similar, you need to look for some key difference in logic. One choice will be somehow tricking you into believing it is correctly connected to the prompt, while the other will in fact be logically connected to the prompt.

As someone said to me recently, the truth is that, at least in a well written official question, there is a right answer to a CR question, and once you see what is going on it becomes clear to you that that right answer is the only right answer among the choices.

In your case maybe you should consider that you need to see exactly what is going on and seek to not make up something that might be going on. Once you see exactly what is going on you will know why among the two answer choices one makes sense and the other does not.

Hi Marty

Don't you feel that this is more of a direct detail question rather than an inference one? The inference questions are usually more subtle and indirect in nature.

Regards
Ahmed

[email protected] wrote:Don't you feel that this is more of a direct detail question rather than an inference one? The inference questions are usually more subtle and indirect in nature.

It seems to me that it is a rather direct inference question.