The following is part of a memorandum from the president of Humana University.
"Last year the number of students who enrolled in online degree programs offered by nearby Omni University increased by 50 percent. During the same year, Omni showed a significant decrease from prior years in expenditures for dormitory and classroom space, most likely because instruction in the online programs takes place via the Internet. In contrast, over the past three years, enrollment at Humana University has failed to grow, and the cost of maintaining buildings has increased along with our budget deficit. To address these problems, Humana University will begin immediately to create and actively promote online degree programs like those at Omni. We predict that instituting these online degree programs will help Humana both increase its total enrollment and solve its budget problems."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
The prompt has claimed that Omni university located in proximity of Humana university was able to rise the number of online enrollment and also, decrease the cost of maintaining its buildings through the virtual education. Thus,Humana university which was not successful to meet both of above targets-reducing the cost and increasing the amount of students-has been suggested to launch this new educational method as soon as possible. However, before this recommendation can be properly evaluated a few questions must be answered.
First of all, are the enrollment circumstances for both of university identical as a timing point of view ? It is likely that Omni university implemented some strategies leading to increasing the number of applications last year. For instance, it might have waived the application fee or since the classes were held virtually and their sizes got bigger, it might have decided to manipulate discount on tuition fee in order to encourage potential applicants. Moreover, it is possible that increasing interest for Omni university was not only because of online classes but also there was a mandatory situation such as Covid-19 pandemic and broad lock down resulted to growth of online enrollments that year and this method is not going to work efficiently after withdrawing lock down. So, if either of these scenarios has merit, then the conclusion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Furthermore, the president of Humana university has assumed that the only reason of reducing in the cost of a university contributes to reducing the number of dormitory and and classes space. The question is that are there any factors which influence the financial issues? It would be possible Omni has suspended some research programs which requires significant annual budget as a result of passive student s' participation. Plus, maybe there was a deficiency in the Omni heating systems and the board of university would be able to fix shortages and prevent the dissipation of the energy which costs too much and save the money. If the above is true, the argument does not hold the water.
At last, are the equipment and subjects presented by universities similar? It is likely that Omni would add some new categories to its educational program which are exciting for new generation. For instance, artificial intelligence had been represented for the first time at Omni and attracted enthusiastic students to this field to pursue their education at Omni. So, the president have to evaluate the similarity between the presenting subjects at first. Besides, it is likely that Omni university would make too much efforts to establish its equipment to its student connect comfortably. For instance, providing free laptops or free network were the main reasons for the students to enroll at Omni. Thus, the quality of infrastructure should be possible to be able assess the president 's recommendation appropriately.
To sum up, the argument as it stands now is considerably flawed due to it reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to answer the questions above and offer more evidence perhaps in the form of confirmed documents or systematic environmental research study, then it will be possible to fully evaluate viability of the proposed recommendation to start running online classes.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 10 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 534 350
No. of Characters: 2770 1500
No. of Different Words: 269 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.807 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.187 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.015 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 202 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 164 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 130 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 91 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.273 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.067 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.773 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.276 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.276 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.026 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 228, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma
Suggestion: , Humana
...ings through the virtual education. Thus,Humana university which was not successful to ...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 170, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: and
...tes to reducing the number of dormitory and and classes space. The question is that are...
^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 516, Rule ID: MUCH_COUNTABLE[1]
Message: Use 'many' with countable nouns.
Suggestion: many
...ely that Omni university would make too much efforts to establish its equipment to i...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, thus, for instance, such as, as a result, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 30.0 19.6327345309 153% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 26.0 16.3942115768 159% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2819.0 2260.96107784 125% => OK
No of words: 534.0 441.139720559 121% => OK
Chars per words: 5.27902621723 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.80712388197 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.06972799714 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 272.0 204.123752495 133% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.50936329588 0.468620217663 109% => OK
syllable_count: 908.1 705.55239521 129% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.6480928246 57.8364921388 117% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.136363636 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2727272727 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.5 5.70786347227 114% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.279104575325 0.218282227539 128% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0793944222889 0.0743258471296 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0729946008233 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.147343467498 0.128457276422 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0621416671507 0.0628817314937 99% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.64 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.06 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 143.0 98.500998004 145% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 16.0 12.3882235529 129% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => 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.