argument140 【OB小组】第6次作业

phillipsareaUID: 2318537

题目：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."
字数：410          用时：00:36:29          日期：2007-7-18 下午 11:23:28
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In this argument, the author concludes that Professor Thomas should receive a $10,000 raise and a promotion to Department Chairperson since she is popular among students and has brought the university many research grants. At first glance, the author's reasoning seems to be appealing, while clearly examining the author's reasoning we may find it unconvincing. The argument contains several facets that are questionable.

First of all, the author's evidences are insufficient to support the conclusion. Obviously, the size of the class has nothing to do with the popularity of the teacher since some classes are required subjects. Thus, the teaching ability of Professor Thomas hasn't been proved. While she has brought to the university in research grants has exceed her salary in each of the two years, it cannot demonstrate that she can sequentially bring the university such a great amount of research grants.

Secondly, even if Professor Thomas has a great teaching ability, it doesn't mean that she has the ability to be a good chairperson. What a good teacher need to do is to focus on his/her teaching programme and raising his/her teaching ability to meet the students' need. However, what a chairperson's job is totally different from a teacher's, a good chairperson need to deal with a lot of trivial affairs and balance the equation of each department. If Professor Thomas was promoted, it may results in the lose of a good professor as well as selecting a wrong person to be the chairperson.

Thirdly, there may not be only one "Professor Thomas" in this university, there may be more professors who are in the same situation with Professor Thomas. They also did great job in teaching and brought a pretty good amount of research grants to the university. If she's promoted, they also have the right to ask to be promoted. This may results in a big crisis in teaching system of the university. Besides, a good professor will not leave his/her job only by judging the material condition, he/she would take the equipments on research as well as the conditions of labs as first consideration. So why not improve the research condition for Professor Thomas, which may seem more appealing to a good professor.

In sum, the conclusion lacks of credibility. The author has overlooked or chosen to ignore many aspects of the conclusion to make this decision. In order to strengthen the conclusion, the author should give more evidences about the above-mentioned possibilities.

[ 本帖最后由 phillipsarea 于 2007-7-18 23:48 编辑 ]