Critical Reasoning

While political discourse and the media in the United States have focused on the rise of job outsourcing, few have mentioned the sharp fall of talent "insourcing," or the drop in enrollment of foreign-born graduate students since 2001, and its dire results. The decrease in such insourcing will hurt America's competitiveness in basic research and applied technology, with serious consequences for years to come. The de-internationalization of graduate programs across the country will also negatively affect the global outlook and experience of the American students remaining in those programs; they will not have the opportunity to learn about foreign cultures directly from members of those cultures. What distinguishes the decline of talent insourcing from the rise of job outsourcing is that the former can be easily rectified by a policy change of the United States government.

The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in evaluating the author's claim regarding the impact of decreased insourcing in America?

1.)What is the cost to reverse the trend of insourcing in America?
2.) How does insourcing replace domestic jobs lost from outsourcing?
3.) Since 2001, what has been the decrease in the number of foreign-born students in America?
4.) What opportunities do American graduate students have to interact regularly with foreigners who are not students?
5.)What effect would a government policy have on the number of foreign graduate students?

I Solved this question earlier and Its a toughie...i consider myself lucky if questions related to EVALUATION will not appear in my GMAT exam...

This is a tough question because of the trick involved in this question:

author's claim regarding the impact of decreased insourcing in America

This is the key, if we doesn't look this part carefully then we definitely pick Op E, which is actually evaluating the final conclusion of the argument but thats not asked from us...hence the answer should be Op D

+1 for D

IMO D too .

global outlook + the opportunity to learn about foreign cultures LEADS to D

OA: D

I agree with Atul. The key lies in understanding the argument.

I would like to add one approach in asnwering evaluate the argument question. Just for revision because this particular category gives me nightmares too.

As powerscore says, zero on to the potential answers in evaluating the arguemnt and then answer the question mentioned in the option in two extreme ways. If the argument is affected in two fifferent manners then the option is the right answer.

Consider for ex. in the above question we zero on to op D and Op E.

d.) Answer this option by two keywords..."excellent opprtunity" and "zero opportunity".
Now apply the two key words in the argument given in the question. If students have a excellent opportunity to interact with foreigners who are not students then the argument is weakened.
If there is zero opportunity then the argument is valid since in this case the government might have to intervene to protect competitiveness and global outlook.

e.) Consider two keywords as an answer to this question: +ve effect(numbers will increase drastically), -ve effect(numbers will not increase drastically). It is sure that numbers will increase as the srgument says that the talent insourcing can be rectified by the policies o teh government.
Whether the number increases to 1000 or 10, it does not have two opposite impacts on the argument.

Thus choose D.