According to an independent poll of 200 charitable organizations, overall donations of money to nonprofit groups increased last year, but educational institutions did not fare as well as other organizations. Donations to international aid groups increased the most (30 percent), followed by donations to environmental groups (23 percent), whereas donations to educational institutions actually decreased slightly (3 percent). Meanwhile, all of the major economic indicators suggest that consumer spending is higher than average this year, showing that potential donors have ample disposable income. Therefore, the clearest explanation for the decline in donations to educational institutions is that people actually value education less than they did in the past.
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The argument outlined above hypothesizes that the decline in donations to educational institutions in the aforementioned poll is due to a decrease in the value placed on education by potential donors. This assumption is based on the fact that donations to other groups have increased in contrast, as well as consumer spending, which demonstrates that potential donors have enough to donate. While this argument may seem sound at first glance, it is an overall specious argument which requires further evidence to be strengthened.
Firstly, just because consumer spending increased does not mean patrons had more money available to donate. They may be going into debt buying items on impulse, or buying what they consider essentials such as beauty products. To assume total donations will increase simply because disposable income increased is fallacious. The author could have possibly supported this with another survey of consumer donation habits instead of simply relying on the fact that consumer spending increased.
In addition, the author makes no mention of the actual numbers of donors. Instead, the author refers to changes in donations through percentages. However, just because the percent donated to an organization increased doesn’t mean the number of donors increased. Instead, there could be more donors contributing less money because maybe they have less to give. So when the percent of donations to education decreased, maybe the number of donors actually increased, just with smaller donations. It is therefore presumptuous to assume that education is overall less valued when it may in fact be valued by more individuals today. The author should have bolstered this evidence by providing the change in actual numbers of donors.
Finally, the scope of the mentioned survey must be called into question. The author states the poll included 200 organizations. However, the author makes no indication of where these organizations were located and how many other organizations are in the same area which were excluded. It is not unfathomable to assume that many of these excluded organizations could have been educational institutions. Therefore, excluding these organizations may have artificially dragged down the total amount donated to this category of institutions in the survey. Maybe these institutions which were excluded received far more donations than those in the poll. The author should have provided the location of the survey and a clear explanation for the sample size, or cited a survey with a larger sample size.
In conclusion, the specified argument is rich with flaws. Not only is the correlation between disposable income and donations weak, but the author fails to provide justification for crucial information in the survey cited such as the actual number of donors included as well as the scope and location of the survey. These issues must be resolved before the author’s conclusion can be accepted as valid.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 464 350
No. of Characters: 2442 1500
No. of Different Words: 214 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.641 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.263 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.805 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 197 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 137 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 103 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.909 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.542 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.301 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.301 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.058 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 253, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...auty products. To assume total donations will increase simply because disposable ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, finally, first, firstly, however, if, may, so, then, therefore, well, while, in addition, in conclusion, in contrast, in fact, such as, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2502.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 463.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 5.40388768898 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.63868890866 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.89124638922 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 216.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.466522678186 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 791.1 705.55239521 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 47.3708771293 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.25 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.2916666667 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.70833333333 5.70786347227 118% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.217987436258 0.218282227539 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0644806523873 0.0743258471296 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0586796164251 0.0701772020484 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.121210614799 0.128457276422 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0504044261269 0.0628817314937 80% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.04 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.57 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 117.0 98.500998004 119% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.