ARGUMENT174 [Victors小组]7月10日作业 by jennetrj

jennetrjUID: 2275453

ARGUMENT174 - The following recommendation was made by the president and administrative staff of Grove College, a private institution, to the college's governing committee.

"We recommend that Grove College preserve its century-old tradition of all-female education rather than admit men into its programs. It is true that a majority of faculty members voted in favor of coeducation, arguing that it would encourage more students to apply to Grove. But eighty percent of the students responding to a survey conducted by the student government wanted the school to remain all female, and over half of the alumni who answered a separate survey also opposed coeducation. Keeping the college all-female, therefore, will improve morale among students and convince alumni to keep supporting the college financially."
WORDS: 553          TIME: 00:30:00         

In this argument, the author concludes that keeping Grove College, the century-old all-female school, in its tradition form of education would improve students' morale and promise financial support from alumni. To justify this conclusion, the author cites the survey conducted by the student government indicating more preference among current students. Moreover, another study among alumni showed over 50% of respondents opposed coeducation. However, close scrutiny reveals several flaws in it.

To begin with, the reliability of the surveys provided in the passage still remains to be a question. There's no indication of how many students or alumni were enrolled in the study and whether they could be the representatives of the general. It is totally possible that only 100 people were involved in each study while the total number of students and alumni reached thousands. Or maybe only 20 people answered the questionnaires, of which 16 claimed opponents to the change of the educational pattern. The less people replied, the less reliability did the studies achieve. Until the author cited sufficient data about these two surveys, the conclusion based on it could not be taken seriously.

Furthermore, if those studies were reliable, the author reached the conclusion based on anther assumption that alumni who advocated all-female education of the college were the financial supporter for the college. However, no evidences indicated in the passage support it. Maybe the major donation came from the opponents of all-female education, for that matter, sticking to the traditional pattern could do little help or even bring about negative influence on financial supports.  Even the alumni who provided financial support to the college advocated college’s traditional all-female education, there is no indication of the percentage of the money which donated by the alumni available in upper passage. Perhaps the amount of money that alumni provided accounted for the minor proportion of the donation, but the major part came from other private foundations which support the reforming. Author's failure to eliminate or even consider such possibilities renders the conclusion based on it highly suspect.

Thirdly, no promise could be made that all-female education style could improve students' morale. Commonsense informs us that morality is an issue relating to a variety of factors, like family background, educational experience and self restrain. Without any consideration of other factors, the author could not convince me to accept the allegation that keeping the tradition of the college would do good to students’ morality improvement.

Finally, the author overlooks the disadvantages that the all-female education might induce in the modern society. For instance, maybe graduates from the college were suffered from psychological impairment while enter the bi-gender society. Or perhaps such naive college background engenders incompatibility of the students to adapt to the competition outside. Before the author completes the analysis, the conclusion is problematic as it looks.

In sum, the argument is groundless as it stands. To consolidate it, the author should provide more reliable statistics--maybe among the general population--to show that people would like to remain the college in its current pattern. In addition, the author should establish the causal relationship between students' morale and the educational style. To better assess the argument, we need to know whether there are other disadvantages to change the college tradition and if those alumni who support the college financially really mind the changing.