arguemnt3 【0806G-Sunbird小组】第6次作业

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Argument3. The following appeared in a newspaper article about law firms in the city of Megalopolis.
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"In Megalopolis, the number of law school graduates who went to work for large, corporate firms declined by 15 percent over the last three years, whereas an increasing number of graduates took jobs at small, general practice firms. Even though large firms usually offer much higher salaries, law school graduates are choosing to work for the smaller firms most likely because they experience greater job satisfaction at smaller firms. In a survey of first-year students at a leading law school, most agreed with the statement that earning a high salary was less important to them than job satisfaction. This finding suggests that the large, corporate firms of Megalopolis will need to offer graduates more benefits and incentives and reduce the number of hours they must work."



In this argument, the author recommends that the large firms of M City will need to offer graduates more benefits and incentives and reduce the number iof hours so as to attract more graduates. To support his recommendation, the author refers to the declined numbers of graduates working in large firms and a recent survey if first-years students. However, the argument suffers from several critical flaws.

First of all, the author falsely assumes that the declined number of law school graduates into large firms is due to their preference to working in small, general practice firms, while failing to account for other possible objective reasons. since lacking the information concerning with the job that large firms are providing, for that matter, it is likely that the number of job provided by large firms has been decreased, which leads to more severe competition, thus results in the declined number of graduate in M city into large firms. Therefore, without ruling out such alternative possibility, the author can not convince us that the graduates prefer to coming to small firms for job.

Secondly, the survey cannot prove that graduates prefer to experiencing greater job satisfaction rather than to obtaining much higher salaries. It is mentioned in the article that the people participating in the survey is mainly the first-year students. as we know, student's mind concerning ,whether higher salary or experiencing job satisfaction is more important ,would change a lot during the period from first-year to graduate. Moreover the first-year students do not suffer from the stress of earning money for surviving themselves, which is a very important factor for influencing people's mind, so it is also likely that graduates desire higher salary. If so, the conclusion would be heavily undermined.

Finally, even though graduates prefer to higher salary, it does not mean that the recommendation would be helpful to attract more graduates. As offering graduates more benefits and incentive and reducing the number of hours they must work are all equates to increasing their salary. If the salary is not the most important factor that influences their selects, then the recommendation would not helpful to attract more graduates.

In sum, the argument fails to be cogent due to its reasoning logical flaws. To better support its conclusion and recommendation, the author should provide more evidence.