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.
In his memo, the direcotr of student housing at Buckingham College cited growing enrollment, rising off-campus aparment rent and increasing attractiveness to applicants to support his proposal of building a few new dormitories. However, before his argument could be properly evaluated, we need to first examine the unstated assumptions that support his argument.
First, the director assumes that the college’s enrollemnt is growing beyond its housing capacity. It is unclear how well utilized the current dormitory buildings are. The enrollment is growing, but it’s not growing at a high rate. Doubling in 50 years implies a ~1.5% annual growth rate. If the current dormitories are only 70% utilized, or less, then the college is fine without building any new dorms for another 20 years. If this is true, then his reasoning for building new dorms will be significantly weakened.
Secondly, the director assumes growing student body equals growing demand for dorm housing. It is unknown what housing options the students enrolled at Buckingham College have. If the students have many housing options, then more enrollment does not necessarily mean requirement of more on-campus housing demand. The memo mentioned the availability of off-campus apartment, but I doubt that is the only alternative the students have to dormitory housing. Do a significant part of the students live with their parents within driving distances? Is the on-campus housing cost compared unfavorably with the off-campus housing cost? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then the director’s argument does not hold water.
Finally, the director argues that the new dormitories will make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham. A strategy relying on attractive new dorm buildings to attract prospective students is likely to result in students that care about the dorm buildings more than the academic environment. We need more data about why current students choose Buckingham to properly evaluate this argument. If Buckingham sets itself apart in one or more academic areas and therefore attracts strong applicants, then whether or not adding new dorm buildings really do not matter to those self-selected and internally-driven students. In fact, it may harm the quality of the future incoming students.
In summary, before we could properly evaluate the proposal to build new dormitories for Buckingham College, we would need to know more about how Buckingham currently stands out, the current dormitory utilization rate, and students housing options and their relative costs. With those data at hand, it might be possible to draw some conclusions about whether or not, and if yes, when and how many dormitories should be built at Buckingham College.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 431 350
No. of Characters: 2276 1500
No. of Different Words: 209 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.556 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.281 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.836 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 181 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 155 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 105 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.591 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.595 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.682 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.311 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.529 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 11, column 518, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...refore attracts strong applicants, then whether or not adding new dorm buildings really do not...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 351, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...possible to draw some conclusions about whether or not, and if yes, when and how many dormitor...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, may, really, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, well, in fact, in summary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2357.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 431.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.4686774942 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55637350225 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.9447534043 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 219.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.508120649652 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 715.5 705.55239521 101% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 57.3330850786 57.8364921388 99% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.136363636 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.5909090909 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.04545454545 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.345944729424 0.218282227539 158% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.104191015784 0.0743258471296 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0810207736542 0.0701772020484 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.197146957571 0.128457276422 153% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0313192009577 0.0628817314937 50% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => 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: 14.45 12.5979740519 115% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.46 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => 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?
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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.