2025 CSAT — Q32

Locate. This is a valid-assumption question, so find the premise the conclusion rests on. The passage concludes “Teaching has to be re-invented” because “the new demands of society and the future of work” require new kinds of learning. The hidden premise making that inference work is that higher education must keep aligning with society’s evolving demands — Statement I.

Test (the negation test). Negate I — suppose higher education need not track society’s changing demands — and the passage’s reason for re-inventing teaching evaporates. So I is load-bearing: valid. Negate II — the passage never mentions funds, so there is nothing to negate; the argument runs entirely without any funding claim. II is not assumed.

Eliminate by anatomy. (b) and (c) admit II, a claim the passage never actually makes — a real-world worry (under-funded universities) that the passage simply never raises. (d) wrongly rejects I, the genuine bridge between “society’s new demands” and “re-invent teaching.” The transferable rule: an assumption must be a premise the argument uses; a true-of-the-world concern the text is silent on (funding) is never an assumption. Key: (a).

Statement I: “the new demands of society and the future of work require critical and independent thinking… Teaching has to be re-invented” — the call to re-invent teaching presumes higher education must keep aligning with society’s evolving demands (I). Statement II: the passage contains no mention of funds, allocation, or resources at all, so the funding claim is wholly outside the text.

Statement I. The passage’s argument — society’s new demands and the future of work require critical, independent learning, therefore teaching must be re-invented — presumes higher education should align with those evolving societal demands. Negate I and the conclusion loses its premise. I is valid.

Statement II. “Sufficient funds are not allocated for promoting higher education” appears nowhere; the passage is about how learning should happen, not about funding. Negating II changes nothing. II is invalid (out of scope).

Answer: (a) I only.

II is the classic sounds-reasonable-but-unsupported lure on a topic that invites world-knowledge: everyone “knows” Indian higher education is under-funded, so a reader supplies it. But the passage says nothing about money — it argues about pedagogy. The valid assumption is the one the argument structurally needs (that higher education should evolve with society), not the plausible grievance the topic evokes.