In this memo, the president points out that at Green Mountain College last year 90 percent of graduating seniors got job offers; while at Mira Vista College only 70 percent of last year's seniors who told the placement office they would be finding employment had found full-time jobs in three months after their graduation. The president reasons that more business courses and more job counselors at Mountain College than Mira Vista College explains more percent of the seniors from Green Mountain College got jobs than Mira Vista College's. On the basis of this line of reasoning the president suggests that Mira Vista College should offer more courses in business and computer technology and hire additional job counselors in order to help students find employment. This memo contains several critical flaws, which render it unconvincing.
A threshold problem involves that the president does not provides enough information about the employment status of both of the colleges. On the one hand, the president does not say how long the 90 percent of the seniors from Green Mountain College took to find employment. Perhaps most of them got their jobs beyond three months after graduation. In this situation, it is possible that the employment situation at Mira Vista College is better than at Green Mountain College. On the other hand, at Mira Vista College, the status of the seniors who informed the placement office might not be able to represent the situation of all the graduating seniors. Maybe lots of seniors had found employment before graduation, and then they had no need to inform the placement office. In brief, lacking enough details of the employment status of the two colleges, the author cannot justify his claim that more percent of the seniors at Green Mountain College found employment than Mira Vista College's.
Even if last year's employment situation at Green Mountain College is better than at Mira Vista College, the president assumes unfairly it is the result of more business course and more job counselors. The president overlooks a host of other possible explanations for the better employment status at Green Mountain College. Perhaps the education level of Green Mountain College is much higher than Mira Vista College's, so most of the seniors from Green Mountain College could easily find better and more employment than the ones from Mira Vista College. Or perhaps the main majors of the seniors from Mira Vista College may not be as welcome as Green Mountain College’s, so that the students should cost more time to find suitable jobs. In short, without accounting for other factors that may contribute to the better employment status of Green Mountain College, the author cannot persuade me.
Finally, even assuming the president can substantiate all of the foregoing assumptions, his assertion that we must offer more computer technology is still unwarranted. Form this memo we do not know whether Green Mountain College has more courses in computer technology than Mira Vista College, and the president provides no evidence that teaching students more knowledge about computer technology will help them find employment. Lacking such evidence, it is possible that offering more courses in computer technology is useless.
看得出来顺序安排过,层层递进的,挺好的!
In sum, the president's conclusion is unconvincing as it stands. To strengthen it the president should provides more information and comparison about the employment status of the two colleges. The president should also provide better evident that offering more business courses in business and more job counselors mainly help the seniors from Green Mountain College find employment, and providing computer science courses would be helpful as well for the seniors from Mira Vista College.