Instead of bringing cash to school to pay for food, Swengstown's schoolchildren will now use electronic cards that record students'...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
Instead of bringing cash to school to pay for food, Swengstown's schoolchildren will now use electronic cards that record students' purchases so that parents can later be billed. The goal of this new system is to provide children with a cash substitute that cannot profitably be stolen. To make sure that the cards are worthless to thieves, each card will bear its owner's picture, so staff at cafeteria checkouts can spot stolen cards easily.
Which of the following, if true, would most seriously undermine the ability of the card system to achieve its goal?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| Instead of bringing cash to school to pay for food, Swengstown's schoolchildren will now use electronic cards that record students' purchases so that parents can later be billed. |
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| The goal of this new system is to provide children with a cash substitute that cannot profitably be stolen. |
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| To make sure that the cards are worthless to thieves, each card will bear its owner's picture, so staff at cafeteria checkouts can spot stolen cards easily. |
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Argument Flow:
The argument moves from describing a policy change to explaining its purpose and then detailing how that purpose will be achieved through a specific security feature.
Main Conclusion:
The electronic card system with student photos will successfully prevent profitable theft by making stolen cards easily detectable and therefore worthless to thieves.
Logical Structure:
The argument uses a solution-design logic: Problem (cash can be profitably stolen) → Solution (electronic cards) → Implementation method (photo identification) → Expected result (theft prevention). The photo feature is the key mechanism that's supposed to make the whole system work.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Weaken - We need to find information that would reduce belief in the conclusion that the card system will achieve its goal of providing a cash substitute that cannot profitably be stolen
Precision of Claims:
The key claim is about the system's ability to make cards unprofitable to steal. The precision depends on the photo identification mechanism working at cafeteria checkouts and staff being able to spot stolen cards easily
Strategy:
To weaken this argument, we need to find scenarios that would make the cards still profitable to steal despite the photo security measure. We should look for ways the photo identification system could fail, ways thieves could still profit from stolen cards, or alternative uses for stolen cards that don't require fooling cafeteria staff
This choice tells us more students will buy food from cafeterias due to the new cards. However, this doesn't undermine the goal at all - we're told the goal is to prevent profitable theft, not to control the number of students using cafeterias. More users doesn't make the cards more vulnerable to theft or reduce the effectiveness of the photo identification system.
This mentions that staffing levels won't be reduced at checkout. This actually supports rather than undermines the system's goal, since having adequate staff means they can properly check the photos on cards to spot stolen ones. The argument depends on staff being able to verify identities, so maintaining staffing levels helps achieve the goal.
This tells us that cafeteria staff know many students by name, and cards will have both names and photos. This strengthens rather than weakens the system because it gives staff two ways to identify legitimate cardholders - by recognizing their faces directly and by checking both the name and photo on the card. More identification methods make it harder for thieves to use stolen cards successfully.
This addresses the cost-effectiveness of implementing the system, explaining that savings from not handling cash will cover implementation costs. However, this is purely about financial logistics and doesn't affect whether the security goal will be achieved. The cost structure has no bearing on whether photo identification will prevent profitable theft.
This reveals that vending machines in schools will accept the electronic cards. This seriously undermines the goal because vending machines are automated - they can't check whether the person using a card matches the photo. While the photo identification prevents thieves from using stolen cards at cafeteria checkouts (where staff can verify identity), thieves could still profit by using stolen cards at vending machines. This creates a significant loophole that makes card theft potentially profitable, directly contradicting the system's goal.