The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College."To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current

The memo indicates that Buckingham College should construct new dormitories because the progressively increasing number of new enrollments and concomitant growth of off-campus housing during recent years. However, there are some obscure points in such recommendation that should be clarified before making any serious decision based on it.

The main premise of the passage is the probable doubling of the number of students and the consequent additional demand for accommodation in dorms. Although seemingly a true statement, it is not supported by objective data. In fact, the so-called premise seems rather like an extrapolation based on subjective assumptions. For example, there may be a real increase in new enrollments; however, it is not impossible that this is just a transient change. Thus, spending a significant portion of budget to adding new dorms does not outweigh updating the educational facilities or laboratory equipments.

Furthermore, the demographic distribution of new coming students should be taken into consideration. For instance, if a large percentage of them have already personal apartment with good accessibility to the campus, they do not need living in dormitories. Likewise, the students who are well-off prefer to live in personal housings and will not live in dorms. In such circumstances, building new on-campus housing is irrelevant and unnecessary.

The memo claims that housing fees are increasing; hence, in near future, there will be more applicants for dormitories than present. The writer failed to mention the range of so-called rise in off-campus apartment rental fees. Sometimes the elevation is affordable and proportionate to overall economical improvements of a country. Therefore, students may not encounter any problem renting apartments.

Finally, the writer suggests that upgrading and flourishing the existing dorms will be an alluring factor to attract an additional number of students to Buckingham's College. It is inevitable that well prepared facilities will have positive influences on new comers; however, the main contributor in attracting students is the education quality and scientific ranking of an academic institute. Dormitory may be attributed to secondary factors in choosing a college.