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.
Securing a job after graduating depends in part on the student’s abilities and a combination of various factors from the university’s side. The fact that graduates of Omega University were not able to secure jobs cannot simply be attributed to the new procedure that was introduced.
Firstly, the argument posits that the professors began to assign higher grades to students around the same time that a new system that allowed students to evaluate their professors’ teaching, was introduced. It is possible that the higher grades could have resulted from other factors such as, higher quality of teaching, better access to educational resources or advances in pedagogy with the help of newly introduced technology. The rise in the overall grade point of students could have also been an outcome of a new plan to reduce the coursework for students, started by the Department of Education. Omega University would need to further investigate the process by which students evaluate their professors. If anonymity is granted to students, it is reasonable to expect that at least some students would take advantage of it, and misuse their feedback.
From the argument, it is clear that employers believed that the students’ grades were inflated and could no longer be used to accurately gauge their knowledge. However, this may not be the sole reason preventing students from getting recruited. Employers usually use a holistic evaluation system where both the academic and practical aspects of a student’s experience are equally weighed. Moreover, the argument does not state that the employers declined the recruitment after only looking at the overall inflated grades.
One would need to consider the method used to estimate a University’s success in terms of the ability of its graduates to get jobs. A metric that is dependent on the number of students enrolled in the university would be inherently skewed, producing seemingly better results for institutions with a smaller student body. This may be the very reason, the nearby Alpha University’s graduates are found to have been more successful. It could be the case that Alpha University also allows its students to evaluate their faculty’s teaching performance and the same loop of assigning higher grades to obtain better feedback may be commonplace there.
There may be a variety of problems lying in between the newly introduced evaluation system and the students getting recruited by companies. An interplay between several factors influences students’ academic performance. Systematic studies, that include the ablation of a combination of factors can shed light on the real reasons behind the reduced recruitment of graduates at Omega University.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 427 350
No. of Characters: 2241 1500
No. of Different Words: 215 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.546 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.248 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.778 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 181 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 145 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 108 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.722 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.943 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.328 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.565 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.074 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...age of it, and misuse their feedback. From the argument, it is clear that empl...
^^^^^^^
Line 15, column 56, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
...to consider the method used to estimate a University's success in terms of t...
^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, however, if, look, may, moreover, so, at least, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2350.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 427.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 5.50351288056 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54576487731 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.11483861765 2.78398813304 112% => OK
Unique words: 221.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.51756440281 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 740.7 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 40.0792809994 57.8364921388 69% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.555555556 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.7222222222 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.55555555556 5.70786347227 80% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.259310109479 0.218282227539 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0864803406079 0.0743258471296 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0725409874525 0.0701772020484 103% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.142903712487 0.128457276422 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0899036244868 0.0628817314937 143% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.3 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.92 12.5979740519 118% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.47 8.32208582834 114% => OK
difficult_words: 127.0 98.500998004 129% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.