argument174 必回拍

xbcperceptionUID: 2309800

TOPIC: ARGUMENT174 - The following recommendation was made by the president and administrative staff of Grove College, a private institution, to the college's governing committee.
"We recommend that Grove College preserve its century-old tradition of all-female education rather than admit men into its programs. It is true that a majority of faculty members voted in favor of coeducation, arguing that it would encourage more students to apply to Grove. But eighty percent of the students responding to a survey conducted by the student government wanted the school to remain all female, and over half of the alumni who answered a separate survey also opposed coeducation. Keeping the college all-female, therefore, will improve morale among students and convince alumni to keep supporting the college financially."
WORDS: 502          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2007-7-10 23:38:04

The arguer alleges that the Grove College should maintain its all-female education. He cites the evidences which supported by a survey and some assumptions made by himself. It seems reasonable to adopt the arguer's suggestion at first sight, but the allegation suffers several logical errors after close scrutiny.

Firstly, the author falsely assumes that student's morale will be promoted if they are content with the all-female education. Student's morale is not in a direct relationship with student's satisfaction. There are possibly other alternative factors will affect the morale of students.
Students always concern about their own interests, it is likely that they just feel it will be convenient for themselves to keep the status quo of college, for men in nature are fond of playing, and may not concentrate on studying. So the students think that admitting men into school may distract their attention from study. Or perhaps the female students are used to live in the campus without men, and they fear that with men enrolling in school, their regular life style will be disturbed. In this respect, the students' content with current situation is possibly due to reasons mentioned above and have nothing to do with the morale.

Secondly, the assumption that the alumni will decrease their supporting funds if the college adopts the coeducation method is unconvincing. Given the fact that the alumni who give college financial support may have graduate a long time, they are possibly not familiar with the current education situation and just respond to the survey by their experience long ago. But as the society is changing, we also make some modification on our education methods. Besides, there is no evidence show that the alumni will stop their funding if the school does not adopt their advices. The college can explain to these alumni the reasons why we should change our status quo and convince them it will be beneficial to the college's future. Then the alumni are very likely to continue their supporting. Without ruling out these possibilities, we can not accept the arguer's assumption.

Finally, the survey itself suffers lots of fallacies. The arguer just point out that there are eighty percent of students consent the past policy, but it fail to provide us the composition of the candidates responding to this survey, perhaps more than half of the respondents are freshmen, and only a few percentage of the candidates are from fourth grade. Thus, the eighty percents is not as reliable as it stands, for it may just stands for the opinion of lower grades students. Also the alumni who involved in this survey possibly include some ones who do not donate to the college, and probably only a few of the alumni who provide funds to college have take part in this survey. Hence, the arguer should make clear all these factors to make the survey justifiable.

In sum, the arguer's claim is not credible, the arguer need to do lots of investigations about all these possibilities to substantiate his assertion.