4.The following is part of a memorandum from the president of Humana University."Last year the number of students who enrolled in online degree programs offered by nearby Omni University increased by 50 percent. During the same year, Omni showed a signifi

First, the author should ask whether the comparison took place between similar universities. Otherwise, the comparison might not be valid. The fields taught in these universities might be quite different. Maybe the Humana University’s courses are related to engineering requiring the practical units to pass, while the compared university might promote chiefly theoretical fields do not necessarily need real classes.

Secondly, even if the comparison is valid, the author needs to ask what other strategies have been taken in order to reduce the money for preparing classes and dormitories. It is possible that two years ago the university spent a lot of more money to prepare the classes and dormitories. This could still keep them in a good shape that they did not need to make significant adjustments in the following year.

Thirdly, even if the expenditure is decreased by prompting virtual classes, the author needs to ask what the overall income for the compared university is. Expenditure is lesser but does the income of online classes compensating? It is possible that the enrollment in online classes did not stand in a good stead for the economy of the university in terms of incomes. Author mentions the 50% increase of online enrollment but we do not know whether such 50 % is sufficient enough or not. the increase might be from 2 students to 3 ones. The author needs to ask what number of the students enrolled in the online classes and how much their tuition is.

Finally, the author needs to ask how much the price for running such online courses is. As the fields might be different, it might demand a different budget. Promoting the online classes with a decent quality can exact a high price running the gamut from the designing of the site to its maintenance and so on. The infrastructures for high speed internet also be heavy for the university. As the enrollment increase the bandwidth of the site must increase, otherwise students might have problems to attend those online classes.

In short, as discussed, many vague points are in the statement above that has rendered the prediction too cloudy to be persuasive. In order to make the statement crystal clear, there are several vital questions that the evaluation of the statement depends on their answers.