- 最后登录
- 2011-12-9
- 在线时间
- 113 小时
- 寄托币
- 220
- 声望
- 0
- 注册时间
- 2010-7-11
- 阅读权限
- 15
- 帖子
- 1
- 精华
- 0
- 积分
- 243
- UID
- 2850922

- 声望
- 0
- 寄托币
- 220
- 注册时间
- 2010-7-11
- 精华
- 0
- 帖子
- 1
|
发表于 2010-7-16 19:57:58
|显示全部楼层
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."
WORDS: 528
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2010/7/16 15:56:35
In the argument, the author argues that they should take some actions to help Mira Vista(MV)'s graduates find employment. To support his claim, the author makes a comparison of Green Mountain College(GMC). However, closer scrutiny show how little does the evidence bolster his claim.
First of all, the author just hastily generalizes that the sole reason lead to 90 percent of job getting is that the school has more business courses and more job counselors. However, no information offered to explain the relationship. It is also possible that the seniors this year is an aberration that for most year it has fewer percentage of job getting than MV, and it is because the students in GMC study harder than those in MV rather than school's policies that makes higher percentage. Moreover, without original statstics, we can also regard that more business and job counselors in fact decrease the percentage where the early number is higher than 90. Not ruling out these possibilities, the author unfortunately renders his conclusion groundless.
Secondly, even admitting that the implement makes a positive influence, the author commits a fallacy of assuming all the situations are the same in MV and GMC. Common sense tells us that it is not likely lead to the same result. For example, the counselors in MV are skillful and they are already enough to solve all the questions raised by the seniors, or the students in MV have less interest in business than those in GMC in which case more business courses will do the opposite as students are less concentrative. Falling to take these differences into consideration, the author cannot make his conclusion based on the condition that the schools are necessarily all the same.
Thirdly, the author does not judge the employment logically when he regard the percentage of employment as the unique standard to judge the students. However, without more information offered, we cannot figure out that the situation now is that GMC is better than MVC. It is possible that the students in MVC have higher expectation about their job and it is not because they cannot find a job but because they does not satisfied with the offer or the circumstance and on the opposite the students in GMC have lower expectation. In addition, half of students employed in their major cannot represent whether they are successful in employment, because employment in some strange field in fact shows that they can also do well and the owner admit their potential power, in which case argue that the students in MV are better enlightened in school than those in GMC. Not excluding the situation, the author cannot make a hast conclusion that GMC needs change to ameliorate their employment.
Sum up, the author makes conclusion that change should be taken based on the comparison with a nearby school, but makes several logical fallacies. To better support his claim, the author should analysis the differences between and offer more information to establish a casual relationship between those implement and the outcome. To better evaluate the result, the author should work more concise on how to measure the employment and which one is actually more successful. |
|