Directions: Read the passage/argument and answer the question that follows it.

The President of Harvard Business School, while announcing his proposals for a fee-hike, said, We plan to have a \$10000 per year per student hike this time. The students never protested the last hikes of \$3500 earlier and $ 1500 thereafter.

Assuming the above to be true, which of the following can be inferred with validity from the information given above?

1. The increase was felt to be justified by the students because of increased operational costs.
2. Students' indifference was responsible for the failure of students to protest the previous hikes.
3. There is no organized students' union to take up the students' cause and hence there will be no protests over the new hike.
4. Students are not likely to demonstrate over the new fee hikes.

The second line holds the key to the correct answer. The President expects the students not to protest the fee hike on the basis of this experience with the earlier hikes which had not evoked any student protest at all. Now whether this was due to their indifference or the lack of a student union or their feeling about its being a justified step, is entirely a moot question and cannot be justified on the basis of the information given. If we connect the two lines given to us, the second line represents a premise, which should embolden the President to think of a further hike. If this line is put to a yes-no test, the premise collapses, which proves the inherent truth of this premise. The rest of the option may or may not be true and hence cannot be classified as valid answers. Therefore, the correct answer in this case should be an option containing the answer 4, which happens to be option (2) here.