In 1985 state border colleges in Texas lost the enrollment of more than half, on average, of the Mexican nationals they had previously served each year. Teaching faculties have alleged that this extreme drop resulted from a rise in tuition for international and out-of-state students from $40 to $120 per credit hour.

Which of the following, if feasible, offers the best prospects for alleviating the problem of the drop in enrollment of Mexican nationals as the teaching faculties assessed it?

Affirmative action is good business. So asserted the National Association of Manufacturers while urging retention of an executive order requiring some federal contractors to set numerical goals for hiring minorities and women. “Diversity in workforce participation has produced new ideas in management, product development, and marketing,” the association claimed.

The association’s argument as it is presented in the passage above would be most strengthened if which of the following were true?

Which of the following best completes the passage below?

Established companies concentrate on defending what they already have. Consequently, they tend not to be innovative themselves and tend to underestimate the effects of the innovations of others. The clearest example of this defensive strategy is the fact that ___________________.

Most archaeologists have held that people first reached the Americas less than 20,000 years ago by crossing a land bridge into NorthAmerica. But recent discoveries of human shelters in South America dating from 32,000 years ago have led researchers to speculate that people arrived in South America first after voyaging across the Pacific, and then spread northward.

Which of the following, if it were discovered, would be pertinent evidence against the speculation above?

In Asia, where palm trees are non-native, the trees’ flowers have traditionally been pollinated by hand, which has kept palm fruit productivity unnaturally low. When weevils known to be efficient pollinators of palm flowers were introduced into Asia in 1980, palm fruit productivity increased-by up to 50 percent in some areas-but then decreased sharply in 1984.

Which of the following statements, if true, would best explain the 1984 decrease in productivity?

Since the mayor’s publicity campaign for Greenville’s bus service began six months ago, morning automobile traffic into the midtown area of the city has decreased seven percent. During the same period, there has been an equivalent rise in the number of persons riding buses into the midtown area. Obviousl5 the mayor’s publicity campaign has convinced many people to leave their cars at home and ride the bus to work.

Which of the following, if true, casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion drawn above?

ln the aftermath of a worldwide stock’market crash, Country T claimed that the severity of the stock’ market crash it experienced resulted from the accelerated process of denationalization many of its industries underwent shortly before the crash.

Which of the following, if it could be carried out, would be most useful in an evaluation of Country T’s assessment of the causes of the severity of its stockmarket crash?

With the emergence of biotechnology companies, it was feared that they would impose silence about proprietary results on their in-house researchers and their academic consultants. This constraint, in turn, would slow the development of biological science and engineering.

Which of the following, if true, would tend to weaken most seriously the prediction of scientific secrecy described above?

Some people have questioned the judge’s objectivity in cases of sex discrimination against women. But the record shows that in sixty percent of such cases, the judge has decided in favor of the women. This record demonstrates that the judge has not discriminated against women in cases of sex discrimination against women.

The argument above is flawed in that it ignores the possibility that

The tobacco industry is still profitable and projections are that it will remain so. In the United States this year, the total amount of tobacco sold by tobacco’ farmers has increased, even though the number of adults who smoke has decreased.

Each of the following, if true, could explain the simultaneous increase in tobacco sales and decrease in the number of adults who smoke EXCEPT: