In Kravonia, the average salary for jobs requiring a college degree has always been higher than the average salary for...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
In Kravonia, the average salary for jobs requiring a college degree has always been higher than the average salary for jobs that do not require a degree. Current enrollments in Kravonia's colleges indicate that over the next four years the percentage of the Kravonian workforce with college degrees will increase dramatically. Therefore, the average salary for all workers in Kravonia is likely to increase over the next four years.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| In Kravonia, the average salary for jobs requiring a college degree has always been higher than the average salary for jobs that do not require a degree. |
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| Current enrollments in Kravonia's colleges indicate that over the next four years the percentage of the Kravonian workforce with college degrees will increase dramatically. |
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| Therefore, the average salary for all workers in Kravonia is likely to increase over the next four years. |
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Argument Flow:
The argument starts with a salary comparison fact, adds information about changing workforce composition, then concludes that overall wages will rise because more people will have the higher-paying college degrees.
Main Conclusion:
The average salary for all workers in Kravonia will likely increase over the next four years.
Logical Structure:
Since college degree jobs pay more (premise 1) and more workers will have college degrees (premise 2), then the overall average salary should increase (conclusion). The logic assumes that simply having more high-paid workers automatically raises the overall average.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Assumption - We need to find what the argument must assume to be true for the conclusion to follow logically
Precision of Claims
The argument makes precise claims about salary comparisons (college vs non-college jobs), workforce composition changes (dramatic increase in college graduates), and predicted outcome (overall average salary increase)
Strategy
Look for ways the conclusion could fail even if all the stated facts remain true. The argument assumes more college grads = higher overall average salary, but this only works if certain conditions hold. We need to identify what must be true for this logic to work.
Kravonians with more than one college degree earn more, on average, than do Kravonians with only one college degree.
This deals with people having multiple college degrees versus single degrees. The argument only discusses the difference between having a college degree versus not having one at all. We don't need to assume anything about multiple degrees for the conclusion to work - the basic college vs. non-college salary difference is sufficient for the argument's logic.
The percentage of Kravonians who attend college in order to earn higher salaries is higher now than it was several years ago.
The argument doesn't depend on people's motivations for attending college. Whether students are attending for higher salaries or for other reasons (personal interest, family pressure, etc.) doesn't affect the conclusion. What matters is simply that more people will have degrees, regardless of why they pursued them.
The higher average salary for jobs requiring a college degree is not due largely to a scarcity among the Kravonian workforce of people with a college degree.
This is the correct assumption. The argument's logic relies on college degree jobs continuing to pay more than non-degree jobs. But if those higher salaries exist primarily because college graduates are scarce, then dramatically increasing the number of college graduates could eliminate that scarcity and drive down those salaries. The argument must assume that the higher pay is based on factors other than scarcity (like skill requirements, productivity, etc.) to ensure the salary advantage persists even when more people have degrees.
The average salary in Kravonia for jobs that do not require a college degree will not increase over the next four years.
While this would strengthen the conclusion, it's not a necessary assumption. Even if non-degree salaries increase somewhat, as long as the degree premium persists and we're shifting more people into the higher-paying category, the overall average could still rise. The argument doesn't require non-degree salaries to stay flat.
Few members of the Kravonian workforce earned their degrees in other countries.
The origin of people's degrees is irrelevant to the argument. Whether workers earned their degrees in Kravonia or abroad doesn't affect the salary comparison or the conclusion about overall wage increases. The argument only cares about the proportion of workers with degrees, not where those degrees came from.