ARGUMENT140 辛苦大家帮忙看下．谢谢

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Argument140  第9篇 让砖头来得更猛烈些吧！
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作者：寄托家园作文版普通用户     共用时间：29分38秒     431 words
从2005年7月27日10时4分到2005年7月27日10时29分
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The following appeared in a report of the Committee on Faculty Promotions and Salaries at Elm City University.
'During her seventeen years as a professor of botany, Professor Thomas has proved herself to be well worth her annual salary of $50,000. Her classes are among the largest at the university, demonstrating her popularity among students. Moreover, the money she has brought to the university in research grants has exceeded her salary in each of the last two years. Therefore, in consideration of Professor Thomas' demonstrated teaching and research abilities, we recommend that she receive a $10,000 raise and a promotion to Department Chairperson; without such a raise and promotion, we fear that Professor Thomas will leave Elm City University for another college.'
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In this argument, the author concludes that to keep professor Thomas, the university should give a rise in her salary and a promotion. To support this conclusion the author cites that so many students attend her class and she has brought more money to the univeristy in research grants. Howerver, all these evidence reveals several critical problems which altogether serve to undermine this conclusion.

First, the author fails to establish a causal relationship between the quantity of a class with the popularity of a teacher. Thiese phenomenons, in themsevles, say little more than that these 2 are synchonic to each other and that's all. Consider, for example, it may because the subject that Professor Thomas teaches is a conpulsory class that all students have no choice but to attend. The large number of the attendence may also due the ease to get a high mark in this subject. Since all these reasons are possible, I can not accetp the author's specious causal relationship.

Second, the author simply assume that what is true of a group is necessarily true of another group. It is only in the recent 2 years that the money she has brought to the university in research grants exceeds her salary. The author fail to take into account some other sitation, for example, in the past years the money she used for research is mostly from the school. In addition,the author haven't mentioned how much money  exceed her salary. May be  it is too little to mention at all.

Last,  granted the forgoing assumptions are substantiated, the conclusion may still remain misleading and invalid. First, there is no evidence that the professor will leave. Perhaps she is too old to resign the current position and go some other universities. Second, the evidence that to raise the salary and give promotion is effective to maintain the professor is absent. Since there are a lot of elements that a professor may consider as to accept a position. For examle, is her home far from the school, or is this university beneficial for her further research.?Third, some other methods may also achieve what is due to the given method. For example, the university can offer the professor more spare time to do what she wants to.

In sum, this argument is not well founded. Before I accept this conclusion, the author needs to provide the evidencethat(1)the professor is popular enough to be worth her salary,(2)she has brought money in her research far more than her salary ,and(3)to raise salary and give a promotion is the most effective solution.

[ Last edited by staralways on 2005-8-27 at 11:49 ]