The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College."To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current

The argument above is well-presented and appears to be relatively sound at first glace: since the enrollment of Buckingham College is growing recently, it seems plausible for the college to build more on-campus housing for prospective students. However, as more light is shed on the issue and more detailed facts are concerned, the lack of evidence leads me to question the validity of the argument.

First of all, the author needs to provide solid evidence whether the current trend can be equivalent to the trend of future. The author rashly believes that the enrollment of students over the next 50 years will continue to increase since the enrollment rate is growing recently. However, it should be noted that the current trend of increased enrollment would not represent the future tendency. To be more specific, it is plausible that due to the adverse economic situation, many students might not be able to afford tuitions for college, and consequently, they decided not to matriculate into college. Even if the rate will continuously increase in the future, it does not guarantee that those future students will live in the dormitory. They may choose to commute from their parents’ house to reduce expense. If this would be the case, the author’s assertion that the college needs to build more dormitories can be weakened.

In addition, the author should supplement the argument with more information on the recent rise in average rent for an apartment. Without detailed facts on the each apartment’s rent, the author concludes that the rent for all the off-campus housings increased. However, it is possible that the average rent has increased not because each of apartments has raised their rent fee but because rents of some luxurious apartments increased significantly. In such a case, rents for non-luxurious apartments might stay constant, so it would be illogical to conclude that many students will opt for living in dormitories.

Lastly, more valid evidence on the soundness of the conclusion that attractive new dormitories would encourage more prospective students to enroll at Buckingham is required. The author thinks that students choose schools by housing environment, and obtaining this feature would reap a myriad of benefits to Buckingham. However, in all likelihood, schools are decided not by the environment of housings but by other factors such as school reputation, renowned professor, or tuition. In other words, although Buckingham does have attractive dormitories, if they lack prominent professors, students may not decide to enroll it. Therefore, more detailed information is necessary to verify the validity of the conclusion.

To sum up, the argument is not cogent in many perspectives. To bolster the argument, the author needs to corroborate future trend of enrollment, provide detailed information on off-campus rents, and attest the soundness of the conclusion