America has cultivated a culture where many feel they should not have to work to achieve results. The business world in particular has lowered the expectations of new college graduates entering the workforce. The same jobs now require fewer skills and less education than in decades past. While this phenomenon may have originated with businesses receiving poorly qualified candidates, it has turned into a vicious cycle.

The first sentence of the paragraph is the _____

illustration.
solution.
restatement.
topic.

In writing, there are different types of sentences that can be part of a paragraph, including the topic sentence, the supporting sentences that serve as an illustration, and the concluding sentence that restates or solves the ideas presented in the paragraph. In the case of the topic sentence, this sentence is usually the first sentence and the one that summarizes the content or ideas in the paragraph, this means a topic sentence tells the reader what the paragraph is about and encloses the rest of the sentences.

Considering this, in the case of the first sentence "America has cultivated a culture where many feel they should not have to work to achieve results", this sentence works as a topic sentence because it summarizes the main idea of the paragraph and other sentences such as "the business world in particular has lowered the expectations of new college graduates entering the workforce" or "The same jobs now require fewer skills and less education than in decades past" just explain the first sentence. Thus, the first sentence of the paragraph is the topic sentence.