argument9 [AW狂人社组]Goku第二次作业

GokuUID: 2209997

TOPIC: ARGUMENT9 - The following appeared in a memorandum from a dean at Omega University.

"Fifteen years ago, Omega University implemented a new procedure that encouraged students to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of all their professors. Since that time, Omega professors have begun to assign higher grades in their classes, and overall student grade averages at Omega have risen by thirty percent. Potential employers apparently believe the grades at Omega are inflated; this would explain why Omega graduates have not been as successful at getting jobs as have graduates from nearby Alpha University. To enable its graduates to secure better jobs, Omega University should now terminate student evaluation of professors."
WORDS: 571          TIME: 1:15:52          DATE: 2007-3-6

In this argument, by analyzing the effects of a student evaluation of teaching which began fifteen years ago at Omega University, the author concludes that this evaluation measure has discredit the grades of Omega University, therefore badly influence the performances of students of Omega University in job market. So the author draw an obvious conclusion that the Omega University should terminate the evaluation to enable its graduates to secure better jobs. Ostensibly, this conclusion seems a sound and sensible one. However, with a closer check, the conclusion exposes its weakness and tentativeness both in logic and practice.

The assumption that primarily damages the strength of this argument is that it unreasonably presume the performance of graduates of Omega University has been declining since the initiate of student evaluation of professors, according to the comparison with nearby Alpha University. The author fails to differentiate these two universities, and is likely to assume an analogy of graduates from these two universities, and then he sees the losing side of this comparison as a sign that the teaching quality of the university has declined. It may be true in some cases, yet it is more possible it fails because Alpha has been traditionally competent than Omega, though the quality of the faculty in Omega University has been catching up with Alpha during the past fifteen years, and it fails in the competition only due to other reasons such as the quality of the students enrolled, the management of the board of Omega, or even the unfairness in the job market. So it would be rude to decide that the teaching quality has been falling from the generally worse job performance compared with Alpha.

Secondly, it is palpable to see there is a causal relationship between the evaluation and the increasing grades. The observed phenomena, actually, says little more than that evaluation and increasing grades are synchronic to each other, and that is all. Even we concede such relationship, the increasing grades does not suggest that the teachers have lowered the requirements, by contrast, it possibly indicates a rise of academic performance of students in Omega, commence with the start of student evaluation of professor. And this will surely help them obtain better jobs. In short, it is illogical to argue that student evaluation has actually hurt the education of Omega, and then the popularity of its graduates.

To further examine this argument, it is not difficult to find a critical flaw in sense of statistics. Little were told about the way this survey was conducted and how well it presents the whole graduates of Omega. Also it fails to distinct the dissimilarity between students who get better jobs and those who does not. It is at least likely that those who get better jobs generally work harder and receive higher grades in school. Consequently, it has little substantial grounds to reach the analysis that student evaluation of professor results in higher grades.

To summarize, the author normally commits several logical and statistic faults in reaching the recommendation to terminate the student evaluation of professor. Firstly, the author fails to take into account the differences between graduates of Omega and Alpha; then, it unwisely presume a causal relationship that possibly does not exists; then, it wrongly depends on the vague statistic survey to draw that recommendation. To strengthen that conclusion, the author needs to provide more sound evidences and reach it in a more logical way.

[ 本帖最后由 Goku 于 2007-3-6 21:44 编辑 ]

GokuUID: 2209997

还是太慢了，各位排砖:loveliness: