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 trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
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.
To attract prospective students to enroll at Buckingham, the author argues that building new dormitories would stand in a good stead for the college. This argument is based on a perspective of a half-of-century later, which the students' enrollment gets doubled and then the dormitories may not suffice. The author further argues that average renting price for an apartment has risen in the recent years and thereby making it hard for the students to afford off-campus housing. The author needs to incorporate vital evidence in the argument.
To begin with, it should be primarily evinced that the number of the dormitories is insufficient regarding the demands in the “near future”_ the following two or three years for instance. A half of a century from the present time is too far to be concerned about. If the dormitories are supposed to be unoccupied until that time, both the construction costs and the maintaining costs refute the reasoning of building dormitories. Furthermore, many of the enrolling students might be native of that town and there is no need for them either to rent a house, or to go to dormitory houses. These possibilities casts serious doubts on the necessity of making new dormitories.
Secondly, the author needs to provide evidence that the housing price has risen so much that impede the students to find affordable homes. Although the home price might rise, it still may be affordable for the students to rent off-campus houses. Furthermore, as there is not any detailed information on the home prices, the average home price might be due to increase of the luxury houses’ price and not the ones suitable for the students. If these are the case, then the concerns for housing would not be as serious as the author assumes. Accordingly, the building of new dormitories would be an ill-conceived plan.
Finally, to attract new students, it should be evinced that new dormitories would certainly draw students to Buckingham and there is no alternative cause to undo this act. Otherwise, the trend of students might not change toward this college. Consider that it may be problems in the college which are prior in addressing. The faculty of the Buckingham might not be efficient for a decent education, a shortcoming of educational facilities, ill-equipped laboratories, or myriads of other defects may exist there. Unless the other major problems are not solved, with or without the new dormitories, the Buckingham college may not be elevated to a better college in the tide of opinion.
In short, as discussed, the argument lacks vital evidence to support the conclusion. The enumerated evidence which is needed for the argument to be illustrated, are unaddressed by the author and, thereby, the conclusion which is based on such an inconclusive argument cannot be tenable.
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 462 350
No. of Characters: 2289 1500
No. of Different Words: 204 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.636 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.955 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.85 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 163 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.819 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.308 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.529 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.09 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5