TOPIC: ARGUMENT238 - The following appeared in a memorandum from the president of Mira Vista College to the college's board of trustees.
"At nearby Green Mountain College, which has more business courses and more job counselors than does Mira Vista College, 90 percent of last year's graduating seniors had job offers from prospective employers. But at Mira Vista College last year, only 70 percent of the seniors who informed the placement office that they would be seeking employment had found full-time jobs within three months after graduation, and only half of these graduates were employed in their major field of study. To help Mira Vista's graduates find employment, we must offer more courses in business and computer technology and hire additional job counselors to help students with their resumés and interviewing skills."作者: 尾羽 时间: 2009-8-5 15:02:11
WORDS: 540 TIME: 01:05:00 DATE: 2009-8-4 22:38:07
Basing on the data that 90 percent of graduating seniors had got their jobs last year at nearby Green Mountain College(GMC) where has more business courses and more job counselors, and supposing that, last year, because of the lacking of the business courses and counselors at Mira Vista College(MVC), the situation is significantly worse than at GMC, the author accordingly conclude that MVC has to offer more courses in business and hire additional job counselors to help students with their resumes and interviewing skills. It seems to be a rational plan, while a close examination would reveal how groundless it is.
The threshold problem is that there is no convincing evidence to prove the causal relationship between more business courses and more job counselors and the 90 percent job offers at GMC last year. It is entirely possible that teachers have higher quality of teaching to lead the fact that students in GMC are better in average grade of examinations and that GMC provide more opportunities for students to have practice in extra courses to meet the prospect of the employers who are willing to hire a new employee with more working experience. Thus, unless the author has excluded these possibilities mentioned above which may cause a better result of employment of graduating students and GMC, the deduction cannot be reasonable.
What further weakens the conclusion of this argument is the fact that the unfair comparison of the employment circumstances between students of GMC and MVC. For one thing, the author fails to present the fact that how much time did the 90 percent of students of GMC spend to get the job after graduation. In other word, the proportion of employed graduating seniors of MGC might be fewer than 70 percent when the time for seeking job has been considered. Similarly, without the detailed information about the situation of relevance with the job and major of graduates of GMC, the author cannot deem that the employment status of their college is worse than of GMC.
Ultimately, even assuming that the employment status of MVC indeed is not better than of GMC, the author still cannot claim that more courses and job counselors would improve the bad situation. The author has not to get the bottom of the real cause for the lesser amount of graduates who has been employed in MVC. Graduating seniors in MVC may not have sufficient practice experience for work and they are not ready to suffer the psychological stress from working. By contrast, they may have more creativity and enterprise to find their own business rather than to be hired by others. These are all possible factor which were not concerned by the author that may lead the apparently distinct of the employment status of MVC and GMC.
In sum, the deduction of this argument is not well reasoned. To make it more logically acceptable, the author would have to present more specific information of the survey for the data of the two colleges’ employment status and appropriate deduction, such as what the main reason is causing a significant different of employment status between students from MVC and GMC, what the effective measure to solve the problem if the situation of MVC is worse exactly.