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 argument claims that Faculty retention is higher when college professors are offered free tuition at the university for their college age children. Stated in this way, the argument fails to mention several key factors on the basis of which this claim could be evaluated. The conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence the argument is weak/unconvincing and has several flaws.
First, the argument readily assumes that a tuition free policy would enhance morale and lure new faculty members. This statement is a stretch and the analogy is troubling. For example, how does faculty retention relate to enhancing morale or luring new professors? Clearly there is no cohesion in the authors analogy. Luring new professors, faculty retention and boosting morale are completing different things. The author failed to mention how one relates to the other. It could be that, this tuition waiver policy worked for luring new professors, but i dont see how it could enhance morale. The argument could have been much clearer if it explicitly stated how the tuition waiver policy would enhance morale, lure new professors and retain old faculty members.
Secondly, the argument claims that faculty retention is higher when professors are offered free tuition at the university for their own college-aged children. This is again a weak and unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any correlation between tuition free policy and faculty retention. To illustrate, what of professors that do not have college aged children? How does this policy relate to them? While it is possible that this policy worked for parents with tuition aged kids, what about parents that do not want their kids to attend Sea town university? These are college kids, hence they are mature enough to make decisions about the college they want to attend. What if they do not want to attend Sea town University? If the argument had provided evidence that the kids of these professors would like to attend Sea town university or professors that do not have college aged kids are being compensated somehow, then the argument would have been a lot more convincing.
Finally, a study was conducted. For a proper study to be conducted, there has to be either a control group or graphs/numbers to enhance the quality of the study. We do not know the percentage of faculty retention that occurred, hence how do we know the number of professors that were retained? Is this number representative enough of the sample group for a decision to be made? Without convincing answers to these questions, one is left with the impression that the claim is more wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all relevant facts and conducted a proper study.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK. correct arguments: while it works for A, it may not work for B.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 482 350
No. of Characters: 2410 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.686 4.7
Average Word Length: 5 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.589 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 187 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 139 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.852 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.877 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.519 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.295 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.499 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.1 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 367, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...s for which there is no clear evidence. Hence the argument is weak/unconvincing and h...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 302, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...rs? Clearly there is no cohesion in the authors analogy. Luring new professors, faculty...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 557, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...worked for luring new professors, but i dont see how it could enhance morale. The ar...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, hence, if, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, while, as to, for example, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 39.0 55.5748502994 70% => OK
Nominalization: 35.0 16.3942115768 213% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2472.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 480.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.15 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.68069463864 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75585235857 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.420833333333 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 776.7 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 19.7664670659 137% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 48.0397926049 57.8364921388 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 91.5555555556 119.503703932 77% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.7777777778 23.324526521 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.11111111111 5.70786347227 72% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.225856657522 0.218282227539 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0682030592105 0.0743258471296 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0973845987231 0.0701772020484 139% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.121908559266 0.128457276422 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0585097286408 0.0628817314937 93% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.7 14.3799401198 81% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 48.3550499002 112% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.29 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.93 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 12.3882235529 52% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.