157. The following recommendation was made by the president and administrative staff of Grove College, a private institution, to the college's governing committee.
Recently, there have been discussions about ending Grove College's century-old tradition of all-female education by admitting male students into our programs. At a recent faculty meeting, a majority of faculty members voted in favor of coeducation, arguing that it would encourage more students to apply to Grove. However, Grove students, both past and present, are against the idea of coeducation. Eighty percent of the students responding to a survey conducted by the student government wanted the school to remain all female, and over half of the alumnae who answered a separate survey also opposed coeducation. Therefore, we recommend maintaining Grove College's tradition of all-female education. We predict that keeping the college all-female will improve morale among students and convince alumnae to keep supporting the college financially.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The following recommendation suggests that the present president and staff of Grove College do not like the idea of co-education of male and female students. Since all-female education is a unique century-old tradition of school, the president and staff are concerned of the idea of co-education. However, there is a few questions need to be answered to persuade the committee.
On the following recommendation, it says that students are against the idea of co-education, and it based on survey results of the students. The result shows that 80% of “students” want to remain all-female, and so do 50% of the alumnae. However, the survey results are too vague to show the true picture. Who is the “students”? It should be clear about the “students” whether it means only present students, or past students also. Since alumnae had a separate survey, the results might be doubled.
Moreover, we cannot be sure if the result shows the major opinions. If only a fraction of students answered the survey, it cannot represent all student opinions about the idea of co-education. For example, 40 out of 200 students, 20 percent of the school students, conducted the survey, and 32 students, 80 percent of 40 students, answered that they do not want remain all-female education system. It only represents 16 percent of all student opinions. This fallacy is applied to alumnae survey as well. It is not quite feasible conducting a survey of all alumnae.
Second of all, they recommend remaining all-female education because they expect of improve morals, and financial support from alumnae. However, they prevaricated about the details of both matters. Because improvement of morals is uncountable, it needs to be compared with other private schools that adopting female and male co-education system. Also, the financial support from the alumnae is worth to look into it. How much financial support are we expecting if we keep the tradition, or if we transit to co-education? The committee voted for co-education because it is the opportunity to get more students, and bring more money. Finance of the school should be examined and compared in both case.
In this recommendation, they brought up a survey results which we are not sure if is valid information, and only negative aspects of co-education system. If they want to this recommendation to be considered, they need to consider both drawbacks and benefits.
Better to argue like this:
Argument 1: how are the ideas from incoming students?
Argument 2: No evidence to prove that Grove's alumni as a group would be less inclined to donate money merely if Grove begins admitting male students.
Argument 3: Student morale would improve under the status is logically unsound.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 393 350
No. of Characters: 1950 1500
No. of Different Words: 168 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.452 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.962 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.855 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 152 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 123 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 16.375 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.563 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.583 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.504 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.112 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5