Critical Reasoning

Some Universities have created environmental studies programs that can be marketed to prospective students but that suffer from too little administrative support, limited faculty resources, and a lack of careful deliberation over the hard choices.In the short term, this institutional strategy can pay rich dividends: At minimal expense a university can lay claim to an environmental studies program and attract new students or accommodate the interest of existing ones, perhaps with the full intention of bringing additional resources to bear in later years. As the number of students in these skeleton programs grows, however the flimsy administrative and curricular scaffolding begins to buckle, leading to anything goes strategy that degenerates into curricular coherence.

The passage implies which of the following about the relationship between students and environmental studies program?

a) Students new to a university are more likely to be aware of environmental studies programs than existing students

b) students prefer curricular incoherence in environmental studies programs to rigid administrative decision making

c) The curricular flexibility of the environmental studies program is an attraction for new students

d) If a university offers an environmental studies program, then students will enroll in it

e) New students will guarantee the success of an environmental studies program.