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

In this argument, the director of student housing at Buckingham College recommends to build a number of new dormitories for the students. To support the argument, he points out that students will be double over the next 50 years, and implies that students will be unable to afford the off-campus housing because the average apartment rent has risen in recent years. Also, he claims new dormitories would attract prospective students to enroll Buckingham. The argument seems reasonable at first glance. However, there are insufficient evidences to support the claims. The reasons are stated as follows.

First, the director claims that the students will be double over the next 50 years based on current trends, so there will be inadequate dormitory space. He only points out that the current year’s enrollment trend of Buckingham, but he does not give evidences that the enrollment will keep growing in the future. Perhaps, the crude rate may decrease or more colleges could be established to tackle the problem. For that matter, the enrollment rate will not increase over the 50 years. Even if the director’s claim comes true, the enrollment rate will increase 2% per year. So, without providing substantial evidence, such as the crude birth rate, the director cannot assume the Buckingham’s enrollment will be double over the 50 years. So the recommendation cannot be made.

Second, the director claims that the average apartment rent will raise in the recent year and the students will hardly afford the off-campus housing. However, the increase of average rent does not mean that all the apartment rent will increase. Perhaps only the high class apartment rent increase and thus attribute to the increase of average rent for an apartment. Or perhaps the apartment rent will decrease in the future because of different finical reasons. So, it is still affordable for students to rent the apartment. Without providing substantial evidence, such as the actual renting value of an apartment and its future trend, the director cannot imply that students will be difficult to afford off-campus housing.

Last but not least, the director claims that attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll Buckingham. However, there is no substantial evidence to support the causal relationship between dormitory and the enrollment of a college. Admittedly, dormitory might be parts of the consideration for students to enroll a college. However, the location, teacher’s quality, the other public facility of Buckingham might also be the consideration for students to enroll a college. So, without providing sufficient evidence that student enroll Buckingham is because of the new dormitory, this claim would certainly weaken the argument.

To sum up, in order to fully evaluate this argument, it is required to ascertain that the students will double over the next 50 years by surveys or official crude birth rate. Also, is there any surveys supporting that the students are unable to afford the increasing apartment rents. At the same time, it is needed to know how many percentages of students are attracted by dormitories to enroll.