"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.
The president of Humana University recommends offering online degree programs in order to increase its total enrollment and also help alleviate its budget problems. The president offers Omni University’s example to buttress his/her claims. Although the prediction might seem cogent at a cursory glance, certain questions need to be answered in order to evaluate it properly.
Firstly, the president assumes that the expenditures for dormitory and classroom space got reduced due to the online programs. An important question here is, did the cost decrease due to efficient management? Perhaps, Omni University started using efficient LED’s in the dormitories in order to reduce the number of times the lightbulbs needed to be changed. It is also likely that they started using more congested classrooms in order to fit more students in a single classroom.
Secondly, the president believes that promoting online programs will yield the same results produced by Omni. To better evaluate this argument, an important question must be answered. Are the students of the two universities comparable? Perhaps, Omni offers a special scholarship program to the students who choose online program. It is also likely that Omni caters to students living abroad and most of them prefer to study online in order to curtail the cost of moving to a new country in order to study.
At last, the president assumes that introducing these online degree programs will not only increase the total enrollment, but also solve budget problems. This argument seems premature and specious and an important question must be answered. Will the institution of these online degree programs be profitable for the university? Instituting an online degree program will require considerable recruitment funding and also technical funding. This might also result in a reduction of students who enroll for offline programs as they might have chosen Humana solely based on the fact that Humana offers offline only courses. Perhaps, Humana has a reputation of offering good offline faculty and distributing this faculty online will reduce the interest of many students.
In conclusion, the prediction put forth by the president and the arguments upon which it is based can only be evaluated if the questions regarding the manner in which Omni managed to reduce the costs of dormitory maintenance, the students who are enrolled or who prefer to enroll in Omni University and the profitability of introducing such programs at Humana are answered. As it stands, the president’s prediction does not seem probable.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 406 350
No. of Characters: 2128 1500
No. of Different Words: 191 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.489 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.241 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.739 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 179 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 100 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.3 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.833 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.45 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.322 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.086 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, if, regarding, second, secondly, so, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2178.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 405.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.37777777778 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.48604634366 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84431798416 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.471604938272 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 692.1 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.37007867 57.8364921388 116% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.9 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.25 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.85 5.70786347227 67% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.264146394365 0.218282227539 121% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0888740306295 0.0743258471296 120% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0635792148864 0.0701772020484 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.160687039096 0.128457276422 125% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0239454339614 0.0628817314937 38% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.92 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.76 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.