【Big Fish】03月22日Argument9--By Sansouci

SansouciUID: 2755036

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: 421
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2010-3-22 11:34:33

In this memorandum, the arguer advocates that Omega University should terminate student evaluation professors now for the purpose of enable its graduates to secure better jobs. To substantiate the conclusion, the author cites a implement in Omega University about fifteen years ago and subsequence phenomenon in university. What's more, the arguer provide another evidence that Alpha University who has a successful at getting jobs. Nevertheless, no matter how convincible this argument at first glance, I remain skeptic towards its conclusion due to several vital fallacies made by the arguer. The reasons are stated as follows.

In the first place, the arguer assume that student grade average at Omega is not actually and study ability of student are not promote than ever before. Although this is possible, the arguer offers no evidence to support this crucial assumption. It is very possible that by the evaluate system, ability of students and professors in university are progress at all. Since the essence of evaluate system is expect teachers can respect opinions of students and promote teaching level eventually promote students' study ability and interests. The arguer unfairly assumes that student grade promotion is result from ingenious professor behavior. So I cannot be convinced that evaluate system is useless and should be ended.

What's more, the author made a false analogy that Omega University graduates have not been as successful at getting jobs as have graduates from nearby Alpha University. There is no related information about Alpha University, do it also use evaluate system? Or some other conditions leads to its high ratio employment of graduates. Without these evidences, the author cannot bolster the recommendation.

The last but not the least important, even if the evidence turns out to support the foregoing assumption, the arguer just simple assumes that end the student evaluation for professor are facilitate graduates find a good job. Common senses that many factors would influence students are employed. Such as whether the major has a market to those students, and circumstance of economic market whether flourish or depression is important to find jobs. And these factors are not can be controlled by university itself. To reach the conclusion, the arguer must explain why none of these alternatives are available or why none of them is able to sustain.

To sum up, this argument is not persuasive as it stands. In order to make it logically acceptable, the auger should reason more convincingly about student evaluation of professors is indeed useless. In addition, the author should take every possible consideration into account.