argue9求拍狠拍

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9The following appeared in a memorandum from a dean at Omega University.

"Fifteen years ago, Omega University implemented a new procedure that encouraged students to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of all their professors. Since that time, Omega professors have begun to assign higher grades in their classes, and overall student grade averages at Omega have risen by thirty percent. Potential employers apparently believe the grades at Omega are inflated; this would explain why Omega graduates have not been as successful at getting jobs as have graduates from nearby Alpha University. To enable its graduates to secure better jobs, Omega University should now terminate student evaluation of professors."


In this argument, the dean claims that Omega University should terminate student evaluation of professor in order to guarantee the graduates better jobs. To support this conclusion, the dean cites the evidence that the evaluation forces professors to assign higher grades thus inflating the grade which is believed by employers, so Omega graduates hardly get jobs as successful as those from Alpha University. The inference seems to be logically sound at first glance, while close scrutiny of it reveals several flaws.

The threshold problem with the assertion is that it assumes that the procedure which encourages students to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of professors forces the professors to assign higher grades to ingratiate students for higher grades of themselves, thus leading to the increase of grades average. Although it is possible, the dean fails to provide any further evidence to confirm this assertion. Perhaps the evaluation indeed promotes the effectiveness of professors and the vividness of classes but not the ingratiation, thus students study more positive. It is also a most likely supposition that the evaluation spark off novel teaching methods to “ingratiate” students but not assigning higher grades. Students are attracted by these new methods and benefit a lot from classes so that the grade averages rises. Without considering and ruling out all possibilities that might serve to undermine the assertion, the dean cannot persuade me.

The second flaw that disintegrates this argument by stealth is that the dean makes an unwarranted assumption that the inflating grades which apparently believed by potential employers, also asserted by the dean, are responsible for Omega graduates failing to compete with Alpha graduates in getting jobs. However, it is not necessarily the case. Considering the interviews in most companies, most of the employers do not focus on interviewees’ grades merely but also other characteristics which are proper for the company. Perhaps Omega students value the grades most and neglect fostering other abilities while Alpha students are educated for developments in all aspects, so Alpha graduates thoroughly beat those from Omega in the interviews. As mentioned above, without accounting for all other alternative explanations, it is reasonable to cast considerable doubts on this assumption.

The last but not the least, even if the dean can substantiate all of the foregoing assumptions, the asseveration that terminating the evaluation will ensure graduates better jobs is still a fallacy. Graduates in Omega may definite good job different from Alpha graduates that Omega graduates are in favor of engineers while ones from Alpha wants to be politicians, so it is inconvincible to say whose jobs are better. Moreover, the dean underestimates the positive influence of the evaluation as mentioned above and hastily terminating it might leads to some undesirable consequences such as the decline of novel teachings and students losing interests, so the grades plummets which believed by employers that the Omega graduates are inability. Thus, under such scenario, adopting the author’s proposal might cause a decrease of employments rather increase as excepted.

To sum up, the recommendation that terminating the evaluation is proposed under some doubtful and unconvincing assumptions. Therefore, to bolster the argument the dean has to consider the essentials mentioned above comprehensively the reason why the grade averages rises, and present more convincible evidence, such as both passive and positive influence of the evaluation and suggestions from employers.