The following appeared as part of a recommendation from the financial planning office to the administration of Fern Valley University.
"In the past few years, Fern Valley University has suffered from a decline in both enrollments and admissions applications. The reason can be discovered from our students, who most often cite poor teaching and inadequate library resources as their chief sources of dissatisfaction with Fern Valley. Therefore, in order to increase the number of students attending our university, and hence to regain our position as the most prestigious university in the greater Fern Valley metropolitan area, it is necessary to initiate a fund-raising campaign among the alumni that will enable us to expand the range of subjects we teach and to increase the size of our library facilities.“
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion
The passage states the following problem: Over that past few years, there has been a decline in enrollments and admissions. Then the passage states a hypothesis for the reason behind this decline and then makes a suggestion, which aims to tackle the problem at its speculated cause. This line of argument relies on a plethora of assumptions, many of which are not very sound.
Firstly, it is not clear that the claim that most students cite poor teaching and inadequate library resources as a reason for their dissatisfaction is valid. The argumentative foundation for the passage would be strengthened, if this claim were to be substantiated by citing a relevant representative survey.
Secondly, related to the previous point is is also unclear whether the declining numbers of applications and admissions is caused by the dissatisfaction of current students. One the one hand, it might well be the case that the applicants are aware of a poor student satisfaction score of the university from university league tables for example, and as a result decide not to apply. One the other hand, many other alternative explanations are also possible and the passage does not argue convincingly that the former is the case. The numbers may for instance have dropped for completely unrelated reasons to student satisfaction, such as a general decline in University enrollment in the country as a whole, perhaps due to more appealing conditions at the job market. The argument presented could be strengthened by results of a representative survey among prospective students, inquiring about the reasons why fewer apply and also by inquiring at the admissions office what the reasons for fewer enrollments are.
Thirdly, it is agued that to solve the problem money should be raised, in order to then spend it on the factors previously assumed to be the cause of the problem. This logic also heavily relies on dubious assumptions. The previous paragraph already alluded one of them. Just to mention a few more: Would such a fund-raising campaign be successful? Is the bottle-neck for improving teaching and improving library resources really the lack of money that the university has, or would a reallocation within the universities current budget suffice? These copious questions show that in this third argumentative step is the least substantiated. I will just briefly offer alternative explanations to illustrate some ways in which the argument could be wrong. It could be the case that fundraising campaigns have proven to be ineffective in the past. Maybe there would be enough money in the university budget, but the universities executive committee is not willing to spend more money on these issues.
To conclude, it is clear from the analysis provided above that at each of the three transitional steps in the logic of the argument presented the passage relies heavily on assumptions, most of which need to be substantiated further in order to strengthen the position. Without such substantiation it can not be said that the reasoning is sound.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 495 350
No. of Characters: 2505 1500
No. of Different Words: 232 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.717 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.061 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.015 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 171 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 142 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 73 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.571 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.031 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.27 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.329 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.045 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 2 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 41, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: is
...Secondly, related to the previous point is is also unclear whether the declining numb...
^^^^^
Line 4, column 953, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'admissions'' or 'admission's'?
Suggestion: admissions'; admission's
...ewer apply and also by inquiring at the admissions office what the reasons for fewer enrol...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, briefly, but, first, firstly, if, may, really, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, well, for example, for instance, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2558.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 495.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.16767676768 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71684168287 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.07706280047 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 239.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.482828282828 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 801.9 705.55239521 114% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.0102403954 57.8364921388 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.80952381 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.5714285714 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.14285714286 5.70786347227 125% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0966696722515 0.218282227539 44% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0304204498985 0.0743258471296 41% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0436328999761 0.0701772020484 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0526280883071 0.128457276422 41% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.039299519068 0.0628817314937 62% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.73 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 124.0 98.500998004 126% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.