argument240 飞越dreams-第一次作业 请拍

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TOPIC: ARGUMENT240 - The following appeared in a memo written by a dean at Buckingham College.

"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a new dormitory. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, should double over the next fifty years, thus making existing dormitories inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has increased in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, an attractive new dormitory would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
WORDS: 332          TIME: 1小时         DATE: 2008-1-27 下午 11:55:27

In this memo, the arguer contends that Buckingham College should build a new dormitory. To support this conclusion, the arguer cites the fact that enrollment is growing and based on current trends should double over next 50 years, and that average rent in town has increased. And the arguer reasons that an new dormitory would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham. This argument suffers from several critical fallacies.

To begin with, enrollment increase does not necessarily means that students amount will increase. Although college is likely to chose to raise the adapted student number, it is also possible that college decide not to increase the adapted student number to guarantee the teaching quality. Besides, the increasing rate is not so high that require enlarging the adapted student number urgently. Lacking the evidence that college will raise its adapted student number, the arguer can not convincingly conclude from the increasing enrollment.

Also, the conclusion that increased department rent in town will definitely result in increasing the difficulty to afford off-campus is open to doubt. Provided that rent has merely increased at inflation rate, no difficulty would add to students who live off-campus. Even if the students indeed meet the difficulty with the rent, building a new dormitory might not be the best solution. The college might help them by means of offering more jobs on campus, an example of alternative solution. Without ruling out of those possibilities, the arguer simply can not convince me that an additional dormitory is needed.

Moreover, we may doubt whether building a new dormitory is the best way to attract prospective students. Building a new dormitory may cost a huge amount of money, which would be used far more effectively to attract good students, such as raising the scholarship. Without considering all alternative ways to attract promising students, the conclusion is not convincing.

In sum, it would be necessary for the author to rule out all the possibilities before we could better evaluate the conclusion.

[ 本帖最后由 prestige11 于 2008-1-28 01:19 编辑 ]