"To serve the housing needs of our students,Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham'senrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, theaverage rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years.Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campushousing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective studentsmore likely to enroll at Buckingham."
Write a response in which you discuss whatspecific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how theevidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In this argument,the author tried to persuade Buckingham College to build new dormitories for students,in order to meet the trend, and lots of benefits were mentioned. However, theauthor made some lethal logical mistakes which made the argument weak and vulnerable.
At the beginning, the author mentioned therising enrollment, which cannot indicate the short of dormitories unless thereare only a few dormitories left now. Based on the information given in theargument, the number of the empty dormitories is unknown. If there are stillplenty of dormitories left, the building of new ones will be a waste.
Whether the numbers of dormitories left isplentiful is closely related to the proportion of students and total dormitories.If the ratio is below 0.5, according to the increase of students given in theargument, which we believe possible for now, dormitories will still be enougheven in 50 years later. Moreover, whether the increasing rate of the enrollmentwill be kept until years after is unpredictable. For example, B College’s bestdepartment is Life Science which is really a hot point these years. Therefore,the College has a great enrollment in recent years. However, 30 years later,there may be an obstacle which stops the development of Life Science; and, itmay be hard to conquer without a revolution in computer, Physics or Medicine.Hence, the enrollment of B College may decrease and new dormitories areneedless.
Additionally, the author have taken it intoconsideration that some students may be willing to rent apartments outside theCollege and then turn down the possibility for the reason that “average rentfor an apartment in our town has risen in recent years.” The author makes theassumption that the rent for an apartment near the College is expensive.However, it’s not logical and lacks the evidence. Perhaps the College may locatein the countryside of the town and the rent may keep steady in recent years; orperhaps the town is small and the rent may be still very cheap albeit it isrising. The author should indicate evidences which can show the rent thatstudents paid for department is expensive.
A well-equipped dormitory can really attractstudents but the one which is merely new, may not. The argument lack theevidence which can imply the dormitory is well-equipped. Furthermore, somethingis good and new today may be shabby and old 50 years later. Dormitories builttoday may have no attraction to students several years later.
Every mistake above can weaken the argument.B College will never follow the advice of building more dormitories based onthis argument. Careful analysis of the evidence I mentioned above may help the authorto provide a more cogent argument and help B College make the appropriate decision. |