Analysis

First, note that the question stem asks you to support or strengthen the argument. Like weaken questions, strengthen questions require you to first break down the argument and find the premise, conclusion, and assumption. Then, think about a way to make the argument better by supporting the assumption. The premise and conclusion are:

Premise: Smith Business School received a low ranking on student satisfaction in an annual evaluation.

Conclusion: Spending $50 million on facilities will help Smith increase its student satisfaction rating.

For this argument to work, you need an assumption that connects Smith’s low student ranking and its proposal to increase it by spending money upgrading facilities. The assumption is something along the lines of “upgrading student facilities will have a strong effect on student satisfaction.” To strengthen this argument, you need an answer choice that provides some information that increases the validity of the assumption.

The first choice doesn’t do much to help the argument. It merely states that a number of factors contribute to the student satisfaction score. But it doesn’t make it any more likely that upgrading facilities leads to higher student satisfaction scores.

Choice B may be true, but it’s not relevant to the argument. It doesn’t say anything about a connection between upgrading facilities and increasing student satisfaction scores.

Choice C isn’t the best choice either. While it is helpful to know that Smith has the money for the improvements, you need a choice that suggests that the improvements will help its student satisfaction rankings.

Choice D actually hurts the argument; if the number and diversity of courses is a large part of the student satisfaction score, then upgrading its facilities probably won’t help Smith too much. That leaves choice E, the best answer.

Choice E strengthens the argument by indicating that the students at Smith are happy with the other aspects of the school. If they are already happy with these aspects, it is more likely that upgrading the facilities will increase their satisfaction. Thus, this choice supports the assumption.

Answer: E