Argument211 扔块砖吧...

susan8940UID: 160449

TOPIC: ARGUMENT211 - The following appeared in a memorandum to faculty from the academic vice president of Waymarsh University.

"So that we can better accomplish Waymarsh University's academic goals, we should adopt the job-opportunity (job-op) program offered at Plateau Technical College and strongly encourage all students at Waymarsh to participate in it. The success of the job-op program at Plateau is evident: over the past two years, more than 75% of the freshmen at Plateau have enrolled in the optional job-op program. Moreover, at Plateau, the grades of job-op students are consistently higher than those of other students, 90% of the job-op students receive job offers within a month after their graduation, and most former job-op students report much success in their careers."

The vicde president suggest an imitation of P college to encourage all its students to join a job-opportunity program to achieve better in job hunting. However, since the evidence the author provides is not so firm and enough, and the assumptions on which the conclusion is based are totally unconvincing, I can hardly agree with such argument.

The first problem involved in this argument is that there is not enough evidence to convince us that the job-op program has achieved great success in P college. The author fails to offer the detailed data of the contrast between those job-op members and others before the program. Since the program is optional, it is entirely possible that most good students who always obtain better grades than others tend to participate in such program, so it is normal that they get better scores after that as usual. Additionally, the author did not give any data about job offers of those did not attend the program, thus no evidence to say joining the program will help a lot in job hunting. Maybe P students always good learners and can easily get a job after graduate, for that matter, for those attend the program, receiving job offers within a month and achieve success in career may not be considered a big progress. That is why we can hardly admit the success of the job-op program in P college.

Even we admit that the program does work in P college, it is impossible to guarantee the same success in W university, unless the arguer provides firm evidence to show the similarity between those two schools, which is the argument fails to show. Maybe most students in W university are receiving theory teaching instead of application of certain technology, in such case, they may get fully frustrated in the job-op program, which may largely decrease their passions in academic study. Therefore, before we make sure that the program will truly benefit students in W university, by making a survey around the school for example, we’d better not earlier adopt such program.

Finally, even we have make it clear that the program will really helpful for students in W university to achieve academic goal, it is not necessary to force all its students to join in the program. Anyway, the program in P college is optional, and students have the right to give it up. If W university forces all the students to attend the program, it may turn out to be a waste of time and energy of some students, who, for example, are preparing for further education instead of job hunting.

In sum, since the author did not provide enough evidence to support this argument, it is far from convincing. To make it more warranted, the arguer need to offer us detailed evidence about the similarity between the two universities and the success P university has achieved with help of the program. And the president should respect every student’s right to optionally choose whether to attend the program or not, in order to make it more helpful to every student.