The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College."To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current

Essay topics:

The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College.
"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
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 memo introduces that there are more students come into Buckingham College and not enough dormitories for them. The author suggests that the school should build new rooms for students and it is a feature to appeal students. However, there is no cogent information to evaluate the argument thoroughly and then render the argument a little unconvincing.

First of all, the memo mentions that according to the current trend, the student number will be two times as now in the future 50 years and then the extant rooms would not accommodation so many students. Nonetheless, the student number after doubled might not be large since it depends on the original student number. Probably, the original enrollment number is 50 and after two times, it becomes one hundred. The space of dormitories might still able to accommodate one hundred people. Therefore, building dormitories would be unnecessary.

Secondly, the writer avers that the rent of nearby apartments is increasing which would cause that the students desire to live in the dormitories. Nevertheless, not every student needs to live in dormitory. It is possible that many local students would like to go to Buckingham College and they can live in their parents' house. Therefore, there is no causation between rent rate and dormitory need. Furthermore, the rent of the dormitories also needs to take into concerned. If the rent of dormitories is higher, equal, or close to off-campus apartments, then dormitories would not attract students at all.

In the last point, the author claims that if the university builds more dormitories, the schools could appeal more students. Notwithstanding, there are many aspects that affect students' choices, such as the eminent of professors, the quality of laboratory equipment, and the quantity of tuition. Perhaps, the tuition of Buckingham College is more expensive that other colleges, which distract students. Or in another possibility, the quality of the facilities in Buckingham is low and the students do not want to go to a modest school.

To sum up, there is lacking of accurate and detailed evidence to assess the argument properly. To bolster the argument, the author should bring more details about the tuition, equipment qualities, and the places where students come from.

Votes
Average: 7 (2 votes)
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Comments

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argument 1 -- OK, but more like: Trends in the economy, housing and even the variety of academic research topics are known to vary, definitely within the course of 50 years.

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- OK
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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: 20 15
No. of Words: 367 350
No. of Characters: 1863 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.377 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.076 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.729 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 138 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 76 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.35 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.747 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5

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argument 1 -- OK, but more like: Trends in the economy, housing and even the variety of academic research topics are known to vary, definitely within the course of 50 years.

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- OK
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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: 20 15
No. of Words: 367 350
No. of Characters: 1863 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.377 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.076 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.729 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 138 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 76 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.35 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.747 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5