The following recommendation was made by the president and administrative staff of Grove College, a private institution, to the college’s governing committee.
“We recommend that Grove College preserve its century-old tradition of all-female education rather than admit men into its programs. It is true that a majority of faculty members voted in favor of coeducation, arguing that it would encourage more students to apply to Grove. But eighty percent of the students responding to a survey conducted by the student government wanted the school to remain all female, and over half of the alumni who answered a separate survey also opposed coeducation. Keeping the college all-female, therefore, will improve morale among students and convince alumni to keep supporting the college financially.”
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The president and administrative staff of Grove College have made a recommendation to preserve its century-old tradition of all-female education rather than admit men into its programs. However, the argument has made assumptions, and proving it unwarranted will weaken it.
At first, it is mentioned that eighty percent of the students responding to a survey conducted by the student government wanted the school to remain all female. It is an unstated assumption in the statement that the majority of the students have responded to the survey out of which eighty percent of them want the school to remain all female. But it might be possible that all the students could not be the part of survey because of the reasons like time of the survey, the method by which the survey was conducted, the feasibility of the students to attend the survey, etc. Hence, if this is true, and the majority of students want the school as coeducational then both faculty members and students will be in the same favor. This weakens the argument as an opinion of faculty members and students is more important while taking this decision because it will affect them the most.
Secondly, it is stated that only fifty percent of the Alumni are in opposition to coeducation. From this author concludes that if the school opposes the view of Alumnus then, the school will end up losing its financial support from the Alumni. But his conclusion depends on the mere assumption that the Alumni won’t be supportive if their views are contradicted. If the Alumni are still supportive then it would be in favor of the faculties and the college may prosper according to the views presented by the faculties.
Thus, the author has assumed that the opinions of students and alumni are more important than faculties. This is not the case as the students will be leaving the school once their course is over, but the faculties will remain for a longer period of time. Hence, the opinions of the faculties should be taken into consideration for the proper functioning of the school.
Furthermore, the Author says that in order to improve morale among the students, the school should remain all-female. The author assumes that the opinions of the students are important and taking the decision in their favor will lead to the betterment of the school. It might be possible that even though initially it will be tough for the students to adjust, but later on the coeducational workspace will also be comfortable for the students and simultaneously this will benefit the school considering more applications from the students to apply to Grove.
To conclude, the recommendation made by the president and administrative staff not to make school coeducational is not well thought out and is based on hurriedly made assumptions. If the factors mentioned above are not taken into account, then recommendations will affect adversely.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 18 15
No. of Words: 484 350
No. of Characters: 2369 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.69 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.895 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.771 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 173 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 119 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.889 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.051 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.833 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.634 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.143 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 662, Rule ID: AS_ADJ_AS[1]
Message: Comparison is written "as coeducational 'as'".
Suggestion: as
...udents want the school as coeducational then both faculty members and students will ...
^^^^
Line 4, column 239, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
... the faculties will remain for a longer period of time. Hence, the opinions of the faculties s...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, hence, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, then, thus, well, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2417.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 483.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.00414078675 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.68799114503 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83858104722 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 200.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.414078674948 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 744.3 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.3430722191 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.210526316 119.503703932 106% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.4210526316 23.324526521 109% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.68421052632 5.70786347227 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.103449182797 0.218282227539 47% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0386484502336 0.0743258471296 52% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0483161634447 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0519776727097 0.128457276422 40% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.026458223956 0.0628817314937 42% => 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: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.02 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.05 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 98.500998004 98% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.