The following appeared in a letter from the faculty committee to the president of Seatown University:
A study conducted at nearby Oceania University showed that faculty retention is higher when professors are offered free tuition at the university for their own college-aged children. Therefore, Seatown should institute a free-tuition policy for its professors for the purpose of enhancing morale among the faculty and luring new 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 faculty committee at Seatown University is putting forth the argument to retain and attract new professors by offering similar incentives as received by the professors at Oceania University. The argument is based on the assumption that the incentives that helped Oceania University will also help Seatown University to achieve the same response and result from the professors. While the incentive on the surface seems to be appealing to professors, the argument is superficial as it overlooks numerous other variables.
The argument explicitly mentions the effects of given incentives at Oceania University, it fails to provide information about the number of professors who have college-aged children at Seatown University. Furthermore, even if the number of professors with college-aged children is the same at Seatown University as Oceania University, the argument fails to provide information about the difference in tuition fee at both the universities.
Also, the claim made in the argument about enhancing morale among faculty is based on the loyalty that the faculty committee seeks to have after the incentives are in place. The claim is flawed because it seeks to achieve a moral high ground among the faculty by assuming that they are vulnerable to such monetary distractions. The reasoning behind the claim is contradictory to the objective of the claim itself.
Furthermore, The argument does not provide any information about new faculty enrollment and their requirements. If the statistics support the claim that indeed the new faculty is attracted to such incentives compared to being lured in by research opportunities or university ranking, the argument's claim would be more strengthened.
While it is true that incentives are a factor in retaining established professors and recruiting new ones, more conclusive evidence is needed to validate the claims made in the arguments.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
No. of Words: 293 350
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 11 15
No. of Words: 293 350
No. of Characters: 1585 1500
No. of Different Words: 136 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.137 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.41 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.032 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 121 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 78 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.636 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.61 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.636 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.439 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.51 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.174 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 2 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, furthermore, if, look, so, then, while, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 2.0 12.9520958084 15% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 13.0 28.8173652695 45% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1615.0 2260.96107784 71% => OK
No of words: 293.0 441.139720559 66% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.51194539249 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.13729897018 4.56307096286 91% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.1160727301 2.78398813304 112% => OK
Unique words: 137.0 204.123752495 67% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.467576791809 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 527.4 705.55239521 75% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 11.0 19.7664670659 56% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 43.1072082715 57.8364921388 75% => OK
Chars per sentence: 146.818181818 119.503703932 123% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.6363636364 23.324526521 114% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.09090909091 5.70786347227 89% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.266631693484 0.218282227539 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.111473663146 0.0743258471296 150% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.108368127281 0.0701772020484 154% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.138686913021 0.128457276422 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0969060159584 0.0628817314937 154% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.8 14.3799401198 124% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 28.17 48.3550499002 58% => Flesch_reading_ease is low.
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.197005988 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.97 12.5979740519 119% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.02 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 15.5 12.3882235529 125% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.