The president of Humana University argues, that the number of students at his university will increase, when online degree programs are offered there. Furthermore, he states, that this will lead to a decrease of university expenditures. He underscores his premises with the example of Omni University, where enrollment in online degree courses has increased by 50 percent and costs for student dormitories and classrooms have decreased last year. In the following paragraphs I will discuss two of the assumptions the president makes and explain how they affect his argument.
First, the president assumes that Humana University and Omni University teach the same courses, i.e. subjects which are similarly appealing to students for online studies. For example, Omni University could only be giving analytical online courses such as physics or mathematics, which are particularly suited for online study as they do not involve a lot of discussion. This is completely different for social science courses, which mostly depend on discussions between the professor and his students. Thus, if Humana University mostly offers courses which heavily depend on personal interactions, the reaction of the students to online degree courses from this university could be less than for the courses offered at Omni University.
Furthermore, the president assumes that the overall university expenditures will be reduced by offering the online courses. This can only be true if students would take the online courses from their homes and not use the university’s dormitories anymore. But, even if this assumption proves to be right, the president has not explained how this will reduce the maintenance costs for the dormitory buildings, as they will still be part of the university and need to be cared for. Further, the professor has not taken into account the costs for initiating and maintaining the online degree programs, such as servers, electronic equipment and additional trainings for professors to give such courses. Thus, when stating that online programmes will reduce the overall costs for the university because of reduced costs for dormitories at Omni University, he is comparing apples with pears.
The university president’s argument cannot be properly evaluated as it stands now due to the unproven implications the president makes. If the president would provide more evidence to support his unstated assumptions, the argument could be properly evaluated. Such evidence includes the type of courses offered at Omni University for online degree studies and the courses at Humana University which shall be offered online. Additionally, the president should give an estimate for the costs involved in creating the online study programmes and should provide information how unused dormitories and classrooms can compensate for the maintenance cost of the buildings encompassing them.
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Essay evaluation report
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: 17 15
No. of Words: 442 350
No. of Characters: 2399 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.585 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.428 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.839 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 195 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 152 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 108 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 81 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.608 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.588 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.401 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.566 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.166 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, if, similarly, so, still, thus, for example, of course, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 37.0 55.5748502994 67% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2463.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 442.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.57239819005 5.12650576532 109% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58517132086 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.98175711518 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.463800904977 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 783.0 705.55239521 111% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.7389126056 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.882352941 119.503703932 121% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.0 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.17647058824 5.70786347227 91% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.277583480047 0.218282227539 127% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.108900745547 0.0743258471296 147% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.086548916129 0.0701772020484 123% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.198210408222 0.128457276422 154% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0762187424913 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.8 14.3799401198 124% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 28.17 48.3550499002 58% => Flesch_reading_ease is low.
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.197005988 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.32 12.5979740519 122% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.96 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => 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.