The argument recommends that Omega University
should terminate student evaluation of professor, given the fact that theoverall student grade averages have risen by 30 percent since its application.This trend has also brought a so-called grade inflation which exerts a negativeimpact on potential employers, especially obvious when compared to the nearby Alpha University.However, the author’s analysis is rife with holes and assumption, and thus, notconvincing enough to lead to the termination.
A threshold fallacy in the argumentinvolves the nature of statistics. Since the arguer only gives an ambiguoustrend without indicating any further details, we can surely cast doubt on itssample selecting procedure and ask what courses have been taken into account.Perhaps there are only a few excellent students getting interviewed along witha set of certain lessons. It would inevitably undermine the survey’s validityand mislead the analysis based on it.
It is also unwarranted to assume that thegrade inflation is the only barrier holding students from Omega University
to successfully get jobs. The arguer just commits a common fallacy of equatingthe correlation with the cause-and-effect relationship, ignoring otherevidences which may also accounts for the difficulty. For instance, maybe it’sthe university’s course setting problem that fails to teach students enoughskills to compete in the labor market. Or from employers’ perspective, they arecurrently suffering from a recession when business isn’t going very well, and thushave less incentive to recruit new members.
Even if the author can substantiate thoserelationships, it is still highly suspect to draw the analogy between Omega University and Alpha University. Since the argument providesno details relating to the two universities, we can believe that their inherentdifferences may outweigh ostensible similarities. Perhaps Alpha Universitypossesses a much stronger faculty team as well as more advanced teachingfacilities, which will apparently give its graduates more competence comparedto those from Omega. Unless the arguer rules out possible factors distinguishingthem, we could hardly be convinced by the analogy. Finally, the argument has made itsrecommendation quite exclusive by neglecting other alternative solutions. Thetermination of evaluation will probably offset its potential benefit , which isstill unwarranted, for job hunting, Lacking of evaluation, teachers may haveless motivation to improve their teaching quality and concern less about students’feeling, and thus making it even worse for the reputation of the university.
To sum up, the author’s recommendation toterminate the evaluation program lacks essential credibility as he/she doesn’tprovide sufficient support. In order to strengthen the analysis, the surveydealing with the phenomenon of increasing grades averages should take more seriousscientific selection procedure in order to provide more convincing information.Besides that, deeper evidences about why students in Omega are struggling tofind jobs need to be discovered, hence the author solidify the argument withclearer causal relationship and more appropriate analogy.-- by 会员 WillDream (2012/4/4 0:02:23)