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 author of the letter contends that Seatown University should offer free-tuition at the university for the faculty's college-aged children in order to lure new professors and enhance the morale among the existing ones. He supports his opinion by mentioning that a similar policy was successful in improving faculty retention rates at nearby Oceania University. While the argument might have some merit, there are a number of assumptions that need further inspection.
Firstly, the author assumes that the correlation between free tuition policy and a higher faculty retention implies causation. In order to convince me, the author should provide pieces of evidence to eliminate other possible reasons for the higher retention in Oceania. Illustrative examples would be higher salaries or other perks that professors in Oceania University receive, such as more grants for research, free access to the gym, free health insurance or free meals at nearby restaurants.
Another assumption that the author makes is based on the far-fetched analogy between Oceania University and Seatown University. Even if the faculty retention rates are caused by the free-tuition policy in Oceania, this does not guarantee that the same policy will have the same effect in Seatown University. To illustrate this, let us consider the quality of education provided in both schools. If Seatown is considered inferior to Oceania, professors at Oceania will not necessarily be tempted to send their kids to this university if they value the quality of education more than the free tuition. Thus, the free-tuition policy would not be a reason to retain professors at Seatown. It strikes me that the argument would be more convincing if the author provided information about the schools ranking and other statistics in the form of comparative data.
Another piece of evidence that the author could take into consideration is the circumstances under which the study was conducted. Common sense informs me that the author, as the representative of the faculty committee, might be subjective in the grounds that he has interest in the free tuition policy. However, if he included statistics about the time length of the study and the rate to which the faculty retention was increased due to this policy, he could provide a well-substantiated case.
In conclusion, the argument is not based on sound reasoning. The author would have to cite pieces of evidence in the form of statistics and comparative data to convince the president of Seatown University.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK. Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
Therefore, Seatown should institute a free-tuition policy for its professors for the purpose of enhancing morale among the faculty and luring new professors.
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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: 50 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 401 350
No. of Characters: 2091 1500
No. of Different Words: 184 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.475 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.214 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.865 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 165 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.588 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.678 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.529 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.359 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.581 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.133 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, however, if, so, thus, well, while, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2140.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 401.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.33665835411 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.47492842339 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92587682912 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.473815461347 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 686.7 705.55239521 97% => 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: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.7018815889 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.882352941 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.5882352941 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.35294117647 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.37054504993 0.218282227539 170% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.117990873073 0.0743258471296 159% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0958568771029 0.0701772020484 137% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.210077203114 0.128457276422 164% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.110661175155 0.0628817314937 176% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.99 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.75 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.