The following is part of a memorandum from the president of Humana University. "Last year the number of students who enrolled in online degree programs offered by nearby Omni University increased by 50 percent. During the same year, Omni showed a signifi

The following is part of a memorandum from the president of Humana University.

"Last year the number of students who enrolled in online degree programs offered by nearby Omni University increased by 50 percent. During the same year, Omni showed a significant decrease from prior years in expenditures for dormitory and classroom space, most likely because instruction in the online programs takes place via the Internet. In contrast, over the past three years, enrollment at Humana University has failed to grow, and the cost of maintaining buildings has increased along with our budget deficit. To address these problems, Humana University will begin immediately to create and actively promote online degree programs like those at Omni. We predict that instituting these online degree programs will help Humana both increase its total enrollment and solve its budget problems."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.

Composition:
The author claims that in order to solve the problem of budget deficits at Humana College, we should initiate and actively promote long-distance degree programs. To support it, the author cites that the program seems to succeed in Omni. However, careful scrutiny of the evidence reveals that it lends no credible support to the claim.

To begin with, because the author did not show that whether the total amount of the students in Omni has increased or not, the data that the students who enrolled in long-distance degree programs has increased by 50 percentage makes no difference. What is more, the author fails to establish the causal relationship between the increase of the students who enrolled in long-distance degree programs at Omni and the decrease of the expenditures for dormitory and classroom space although both of them happened at the same time. The author does not rule out the possibilities that the students in Omni had the awareness to cherish the public assets or most of the dormitories and the classrooms were built just two years ago so that it took little money. Hence, the author fails to convince us that it is the program that leads to the decrease of the expenditures.

Secondly, the argument suffers from the fallacy of hasty generalization. Granted that the program did contribute to the decrease of the expenditures at Omni, we are not sure that at Humana it will also be effective. Perhaps the teachers at Humana are not so welcomed. For that, long-distance degree program cannot better the situation.

Moreover, the author provides no evidence that the decrease of the expenditures of dormitory and classroom space will solve the problems of the budget deficits. It is entirely possible that the expenditures are a small part of the university’s budget so that whether the expense increase or not may has little influence. Furthermore, the cost of the program that the author did not mention could be so large that it may intensify the budget deficits. In a word, the author unfairly assumes that the expenditures are the main point of the budget deficits.

To sum up, the conclusion reached in the argument is invalid because the author fails to provide any substantial evidence to link the long-distance degree program with the budget deficits. To strengthen the claim, the author should present more information about the program and the budget problem and establish a reliable relationship between them.

Time: 25min

Thank You