How to quickly understand mutliple continuous parenthetical phrases?

Question

The problem comes when I try to understand (multiple) continuous parentheses, for example:

Summary of text leading up to this: someone purpose to eliminate 13 majors about humanities since they are helpless for future jobs in society.

That reasoning might make sense if Stevens Point were a trade school, but it is, at least by title and claim, a university, and there is an argument to be made that because the claim is now without support at Stevens Point, the title should be removed.

(It is the last sentence in first paragraph of this essay)

I couldn't get the meaning of "because the claim is now without support at Stevens Point, the title should be removed. ", who supports what? In what condition the university title would be removed?

Meanwhile, I would like to know how to understand multiple continuous parentheses and other long complex sentence, as I usually get lost when read 3 or 4 of parentheses/clauses. Any suggestion about training?

BTW: How to do accurate search of parentheses grammar? Mostly the grammar about "()" jumps out when I google "parentheses".

Thanks for any suggestion!

Answer 1

A quick way to understand it would be to try and read it without the parenthetical statements. After all, parenthesis are supposed to contain only supplementary information or clarifications. You ought to be able to read and understand a paragraph without them.

Here's the parenthetical statement enclosed in brackets:

That reasoning might make sense if Stevens Point were a trade school, but it is (at least by title and claim) a university, and there is an argument to be made that because the claim is now without support at Stevens Point, the title should be removed.

So let's remove it:

That reasoning might make sense if Stevens Point were a trade school, but it is a university, and there is an argument to be made that because the claim is now without support at Stevens Point, the title should be removed.

Still struggling? Break it down further. You've got an "and" in there, so effectively you have two separate statements:

That reasoning might make sense if Stevens Point were a trade school, but it is a university.

and

There is an argument to be made that because the claim is now without support at Stevens Point, the title should be removed.

Arguably, there is a parenthetical statement in that last clause too, it is just missing the punctuation. It could have been written as:

There is an argument to be made that (because the claim is now without support at Stevens Point) the title should be removed.

Answer 2

OP asks:

I couldn't get the meaning of "because the claim is now without support at Stevens Point, the title should be removed. ", who supports what? In what condition the university title would be removed?

If the school eliminates those majors it does not deserve the title it claims for itself, "University". There will be nothing to support the claim, namely, that it deserves to be called a university.

We can reorder the clauses:

... it [Stevens Point] is, at least by title and claim, a university, and there is an argument to be made that the title should be removed because the claim [that it is a university] is now without support.

without support = unfounded, baseless.

Answer 3

I think the core structure of the sentence is the "title and claim" phrase later referenced individually. If you emphasize the later "title" and "claim", the meaning becomes clearer.

As for training: Try to pick up on repetitions like that, that's a somewhat common way to build an argument.