【Flyer杀G作文组】8月3日Argument222-By 但我

但我UID: 2763822

TOPIC: ARGUMENT222 - The following article appeared in a recent issue of a college newspaper.

"Among all students who graduated from Hooper University over the past five years, more physical science majors than social science majors found permanent jobs within a year of graduation. In a survey of recent Hooper University graduates, most physical science majors said they believed that the prestige of Hooper University's physical science programs helped them significantly in finding a job. In contrast, social science majors who found permanent employment attributed their success to their own personal initiative. Therefore, to ensure that social science majors find permanent jobs, Hooper University should offer additional social science courses and hire several new faculty members who already have national reputations in the social sciences."
WORDS: 331
TIME: 00:00:19
DATE: 2010/8/3 21:19:09


In this argument, the article suggests that Hooper University(HU) should offer additional social science courses and hire several new faculty members with high fame so as to ensure that social science majors find permanent jobs. To justify the judgement, the author lists several facts like the comparison of the rate of people who find permanent jobs within a year, the primary advantage in job hunting between science majors and social science majors At first blush, this makes some sense. Close scrutiny of each of these facts, however, reveals that none of them lend credible support to the recommendation.

In the first place, the statistic is not clearly explained. A reliable statistic requires enough samples and representative of all the graduates from HU. But the author offers no such evidence. Maybe the number of respondents is too small to illustrate the point. Or perhaps they only surveyed graduates working in one city, while in different places the demand of job market varies.

In the second place, the author unfairly assumes that the chance of employment is equal for physical science majors and social science majors. While in most of the time, the job market can have great distinction among different majors. For example, the need for computer engineers may be larger than newspaper editors. Thus it is quite possible that it is easier for physical science majors to find a permanent job than social science majors.

Even assuming that the job offers are equal between physical and social science majors and the survey is reliable, the result of the survey is still questionable. Due to the different features of subjects, physical majors might be more modest while social majors are more straightforward, for we know that the things one learnt could alter one's personality.

In short, if the author wants to convince me of the necessity of the suggestion, he/she still needs to provide more detailed description of the survey. To strengthen the persuasion, an investigation of requires of job market is necessary.