The following appeared as part of an editorial in a campus newspaper:
“With an increasing demand for highly skilled workers, this nation will soon face a serious labor shortage. New positions in technical and professional occupations are increasing rapidly, while at the same time the total labor force is growing slowly. Moreover, the government is proposing to cut funds for aid to education in the near future.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion, be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion. (used with permission from mba.com)
The argument that high demand for skilled workers will create a labor shortage omits some important issues to be discussed to substantiate the argument. The statement criticizes the government's action regarding the issue. This argument is not logical in the sense that it does not provide reasons of its judgement. That can be solved as the following suggestions.
Most conspicuously, the argument does not address the source of labor market. High demand for labor may cause migration of workers from low demand countries to high demand countries in the long term. The world is not like it was in the 20th century anymore. It is more mobile, global and offers more opportunities to the people to change their life. If there is need for more workers in a country, there might be a short term labor shortage but if the demand keeps at high levels, skilled workers from other countries will be candidates for these open positions. Hence, the labor shortage that was pointed out in the argument may not be the case anymore.
Secondly, the argument criticizes the action of the government for cutting education funds. Education is an important issue for sure but is it the primary concern of the government at the moment? The argument does not provide the reason of the government's action. Maybe, the country faces a huge loss due to a tornado, or an earthquake. In this case, it is reasonable for government to allocate its budget from education investment to civil services. Then, the primary concern of the government would not be the education but the lives of its citizens.
The argument leaves some of the main aspects as discussed above out. Nevertheless; if the possible reasons for labor shortage can be explained, the argument would have a stronger base. In addition to that, the argument should provide the reasons of the government's policy so that the criticizing can be supportive for the main argument.
If the argument included the items discussed above instead of solely pointing out the possible outcomes without any prove and criticizing the government, the argument would have been more thorough and convincing.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 354 350
No. of Characters: 1737 1500
No. of Different Words: 158 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.338 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.907 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.666 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 126 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 100 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.7 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.329 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.339 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.539 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.075 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5