agr174 [0710G +U Aug小组]第7次作业

571633UID: 2333480

TOPIC: 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: 377          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2007-7-31 10:50:53

Citing with 80 percent of the students' responding, it is suggested in the recommendation that the Grove College should keeping the college all-female in order to improve the student's morale and keep the alumni to support the college financially. Nevertheless, further reflection tells me that the suggestion ignores many practical problems.

At first, the arguer assumes that coeducation will encourage more students to apply the Grove College. However, there is no evidence that it is true. There are many other available reasons influence the enrollment, for example, the location of the college, the equipment, the teacher's liability. So the arguer should provide more evidence that the coeducation will improve the enrollment of the college.

What's more, the argument fails to point out the total number of the responding students and the alumni. Consequently it can be hardly show that the example is representative of all the students and the alumni. Therefore, any decision aimed at addressing the problem of enrollment must be based on more through and comprehension investigation to gather sufficient data so as to identify the actual causes of the problem.

Last but not least, the fact that to preserve the century-old tradition of all-female education lends no strong support to the conclusion that it will improve the student's morale and keep the alumni's supporting to the college financially. It is highly possible that other factors might contribute to the morale among the students, for example, the profession training, the ability of the teachers, the environment of the college and so forth. So lacking evidence, we can't get the conclusion that keeping the college all-female was responsible for the morale problem and the alumni's support.

Simply put, the letter's recommendation is not well supported because it relies on certain a series of doubtful assumptions that render it untenable as it stands. Before I can accept it, the writer must supply clearer evidence - perhaps by the way of a local survey or study - that the investigation will support the conclusion that the all-female education can promote the morale among students and convince alumni to keep support the college financially. To better evaluate the argument we would need more information about the numbers of the student who responds to the survey rather than blurring the data.

多谢xiefen指点arg，找这个文章的错误容易多了。谢谢了。

[ 本帖最后由 571633 于 2007-8-2 20:12 编辑 ]