argument140 打字速度还是不快啊

lindorUID: 2290025

TOPIC: ARGUMENT140 - 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."
WORDS: 433          TIME: 0:30:00          DATE: 2007-2-21

In this argument, the arguer recommends that Elm City University should raise salary for Professor Thomas and promote her to be Department Chairperson. To support this recommendation, the arguer provides some information concerning teaching and research abilities of Professor Thomas. After serious scrutiny on this argument, it suffers several critical flaws as follows.

To begin with, the arguer simply assumes that Prefessor Thomas are popular among students by her one of the largest classes at the university. If students go to Thomas classes because they sincerely appreciate Thomas's teaching methods and are empressed by her rich knowledge, it is reasonable to demonstrate Thomas is popular among students. However, the arguer fails to provide such information. Moreover, it is possible that there are few faculty of botany in the university so that Thomas has a quite large class which is compulsory course for all students. In this case, other Professors in botany would also have a large class. Without ruling out these possibilities, the scale of class could not be considered as an exclusive condition to determine the popularity of teachers.

Furthermore, even though the teaching ability of Thomas is capable and reliable, whether her research ability is as excellent as the arguer acclaims is open into doubt. First, we are not informed that whether it is a common circumstance that Professors bring much more money to the university than their salary. If all Professors did so, the money Thomas brought to the unversity could not illustrate her prominent research ability.  Second, a two years period of time is not a particular long time to attest Thomas's reseach ability. If she were lack of money to support her research two years ago, or if she will not bring much money in the near future, whether she is qualified to attract funding is suspecious. Third, the arguer fails to take other factors into account. As to decide a Professor's research ability, the progress of projects, the significant discoverys, and the original concepts are all important and essential. Without considering those factors, it is too hasty to judge a Professor's research ability by money she could bring.

Last but not least, even though the teaching and reseaching abilities of Thomas  are excellent, the arguer draws the conclusion on a groundless basis that Thomas will leave Elm City University unless raising her salary and offering a promotion. There is no evidence that Thomas is thinking about leave. Even though she is considering leaving, perhaps the salary is not the main reason. It is in all likelihood that she feel unsatisfied with the equipments or can't put up with the heavy burden from both teaching and research. If these alternative reasons for her leaving will not be solved, raising her salary would be useless. In addition, a good teacher and a good reseacher does not equal a good chairperson of botany department. The arguer ignores the different requirements among a chairperson, a teacher and a reseacher.  Whether Thomas has the ability of administrative is unclear. Besides, being a chairperson possibly means less time and energy on research and teaching, which is unacceptable to Thomas.

To sum up, the recommendation in this argument lacks credibility since the evidence cited here does not lend strong support.  To bolster this recommendation, the arguer should provide more sufficient information to the teaching and research ability of Thomas. In addition, whether she will leave Elm City University and why are essential to the recommendation.