turcopole wrote:
[quote ]The following appeared in a letter from the faculty committee to the president of Seatown University:
A study conducted at nearby Oceania University showed that faculty retention is higher when professors are offered free tuition at the university for their own college-aged children. Therefore, Seatown should institute a free-tuition policy for its professors for the purpose of enhancing morale among the faculty and luring new professors.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The letter highlights that the free tuition policy offered to the Oceania University professors increased the motivation of college-aged children and increased their attendance in university. Since this decision was successful, another university - Seatown University should implement the same strategy in order to increase the morale and attract more professors to their institution. This claim is flawed because of the following reasons; the argument is based on dubious assumption and false analogy.
First of all, the president of Seatown University claims that should put the strategy of Oceania into the action, continuing that the strategy will give the same results to their University as well. The argument of president is based on false analogy, since if one strategy was successful in one institution this does not mean that it will succeed in every institution.
Secondly, he or she just says professors, but we are not aware about their subjects, that might be compatible with the interests of the children living nearby. For example, What if people living near to Oceania are more interested in Biology and that university given free-tuition to Biology professors, in result increasing the retention. President should provide more precise details in order strengthen his or her claim
Thirdly, we do not know whether Seatown University is situated in the vicinity of Oceania University or not. They might be situated in close proximity to each other, while might be in different states or countries as well. We do not know whether the interests of the children in Oceania and those of Seatown match each other. In order to make the claim more sound, president should provide some information about the subject area of professors and the interests of children. On the other hand, he or she should provide information whether the Seatown University is situated in the same town with Oceania University.
In conclusion, president's claim, since it is based on false analogy and dubious argument, should be improved by providing information about the location of Seatown University, the relation of their target audience to those of Oceania University. Finally, president, by providing more detailed university regarding the subject area of professors could make his or her claim stronger.[/quote]
Hi
turcopole, good effort!
Can you provide your target score on the argument so that the experts can tailor their feedback accordingly?
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