Fifteen years ago, Omega University implemented a new procedure that encouraged students to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of all their professors. Since that time, Omega professors have begun to assign higher grades in their classes, and overall student grade averages at Omega have risen by 30 percent. Potential employers, looking at this dramatic rise in grades, believe that grades at Omega are inflated and do not accurately reflect student achievement; as a result, Omega graduates have not been as successful at getting jobs as have graduates from nearby Alpha University. To enable its graduates to secure better jobs, Omega University should terminate student evaluation of professors.
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.
The reading passage argues that evaluating professors has to be terminated to recover the hired rate of students who graduate from Omega University. It is based on the potential employers’ view that the dramatically risen grades cannot be trusted to represent students’ achievement. However, in order to confirm the suggestion, several aspects have to be thoroughly considered.
Firstly, the grading system might have changed. Perhaps, the university utilized a relative grading system more than 15 years ago, but it changed it to an absolute grading system. In this case, a dramatic rise in grades can happen as they apply different standards to grade students even for the case of receiving the exactly same exam result. Hence, if a new grading system has been applied since 15 years ago, terminating student evaluation of professors will not result in any significant changes in students’ grades.
Secondly, it is unclear that overall falling in grades will change potential employers’ views about Omega University. Once someone has a preposition to something, change it oppositely is extremely hard. As they already got negative points of view to the university, in order to change it, the university might need to provide stronger impacts than just changed grade rates, such as students’ academic achievements in conferences or prestigious institutions. Thus, it is hard to say that simply terminating the evaluating process will result in an increase in students’ hiring rate.
Thirdly, there is no evidence whether students’ evaluation of professors forced the professors to give them higher grades. Professors are those who studied for a long time and they usually have their own faith in their individual fields. It is dubious whether the students’ evaluation critically influenced their decisions on grading. Perhaps there are other unveiled reasons to give higher grades such as better performance compared to 20 years ago students. If then, the argument cannot hold water.
To sum up, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on unwarranted assumptions. If the university cannot provide evidence of those mentioned aspects are irrelevant, the argument will not be persuasive.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 348 350
No. of Characters: 1824 1500
No. of Different Words: 190 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.319 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.241 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.823 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 150 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 119 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.461 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.307 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.307 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.078 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 354, Rule ID: THERE_RE_MANY[3]
Message: Possible agreement error. Did you mean 'others'?
Suggestion: others
...decisions on grading. Perhaps there are other unveiled reasons to give higher grades ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, hence, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, thus, as to, such as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1900.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 348.0 441.139720559 79% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.45977011494 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.31911543099 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.00035779784 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 198.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.568965517241 0.468620217663 121% => OK
syllable_count: 594.9 705.55239521 84% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 46.5819336568 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.555555556 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.3333333333 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.44444444444 5.70786347227 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.331135205144 0.218282227539 152% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0949143882307 0.0743258471296 128% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0746561839214 0.0701772020484 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.161569450038 0.128457276422 126% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0972099814508 0.0628817314937 155% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
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: 14.39 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.48 8.32208582834 114% => OK
difficult_words: 108.0 98.500998004 110% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 79.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.75 Out of 6
---------------------
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.