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 a memo sent to the director of student housing of Buckingham College, it was argued to build several new dormitories to accomodate the future student intake which is following a growing trend. But the reasoning made to reach the conslusion is based on many assumptions and missing evidence, lack of which have the potential to weaken the conclusion.
The author here assumed that the growing trend of student enrollment will remain the same for the next 50 years, which will make the student number double in the college. This is a very long period of time and no reasoning behind for exact reason why the student intake is increasing is given along with why it will continue to increase. It is possible that the College might be providing some new scholarship program for the next five year. After that program the student intake might decline, resulting in the existing dormitories being sufficient. At the same time, no information about the current housing condition is stated, how much of it it utilized at the moment. It is also possible that the college is situated in a suburban area, where the rent is low and the student prefer to live off campus. This informations are required to make the decision to build more dormitories more sound.
Furthermore, the author stated here that the average cost of housing is rising in the town. Average rent does not give the complete picture of the rent. It is possible that a more developed part of the town has higher than average rent which increased the average rent. Again, It might be possible that where the student prefer to live for off-campus has lower than the average rent, even lower than the dormitories cost. This can result in the more shift of student from dormitories to the off-campus living arrangement. at the same time, it is not stated here, whether the cost of building new dorms will have effect on the cost of students. If it incrases the cost of studying in the college, this might have a blow on the increasing student intake.
Another reasoning made by the author here is that attractive new dormitories will attract more new students. But that might not be the case as other motivating factors might be in play for the students to choose a college. For example, if another college has better engineering program than the Buckingham College, a student wanting to be an engineer might choose the other college over Buckingham. Also, the attractive new dormitories might become costly for a student to bear chose alternative living arrangement, which will in turn defeat the main purpose of building the dormitories.
Building new dormitories to accomodate students is a necessary step but in this case of Buckingham college many unanswered questions and assumptions are there to make a clear decision. This might be profitable for the college by attacting more students, but the justification of the cost needs to more cogent by clearing the assumpptions and unanswered questions made by the author.
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: 21 15
No. of Words: 505 350
No. of Characters: 2429 1500
No. of Different Words: 205 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.74 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.81 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.623 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 170 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 133 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.048 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.201 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.429 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.338 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.539 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 192, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
...ble in the college. This is a very long period of time and no reasoning behind for exact reaso...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 461, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...r the next five year. After that program the student intake might decline, result...
^^
Line 3, column 645, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: it
...ousing condition is stated, how much of it it utilized at the moment. It is also poss...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 809, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: These
... the student prefer to live off campus. This informations are required to make the d...
^^^^
Line 5, column 523, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: At
...s to the off-campus living arrangement. at the same time, it is not stated here, w...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, if, so, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2487.0 2260.96107784 110% => OK
No of words: 505.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 4.92475247525 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74048574033 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69057397499 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.417821782178 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 784.8 705.55239521 111% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 38.4328597784 57.8364921388 66% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.045454545 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.9545454545 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.95454545455 5.70786347227 34% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.228549524607 0.218282227539 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0711969337632 0.0743258471296 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0732080323092 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.150224332618 0.128457276422 117% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0596080541149 0.0628817314937 95% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.55 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.82 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.