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45.
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.
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提纲：
1. Omni大学在线项目真的有很多人参加？即使是，其费用下降完全是由该原因造成的？
2. Omni与Humana可以类比吗？
3. Humana目前困境的原因是什么呢？仅仅在线项目就能解决吗？
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In the memo above, in order to increase the enrollment and solve the problem of budget deficit, the president of Humana University recommends that the university should initiate and actively promote online degree programs like those at Omni. To support his contention, several facts are offered: Last year, the number of students enrolled in an online program in Omni has increased by 50% and the expenditures also show a significant decrease. The president claims that it is the adoption of online program that is responsible for all these change in Omni. Though plausible at first glance, the argument is weak, actually.
First of all, it is told that the scale of that online degree program in Omni has increased by 50% last year. But what's the number of students in the program the year before last year? If there are not too many, then even increased by 50%, the total amount could still be negligible so that it won't change the financial situation in Omni a lot. Even if the total amount of students is considerable, the argument fails to prove that the decrease of expenditure for dormitory and classroom space is caused by the online program. It is possible that other measures are also adopted by Omni, for example, maybe some old dormitories are dismantled last year so that the total fee declined. Without ruling out these possibilities, the example of Omni lends no support for the argument.
In the second place, the president assumes that the two universities are similar to each other and what happened to Omni can also happen here in Humana, however, no evidence in the argument can back that assumption. What if the Omni is a school whose majors are concentrated in social science like Journalism or Philosophy etc. while Humana is mainly engineering majored, which means only by online teaching and learning, the education quality cannot be guaranteed. If so, the adoption of the practice can be inoperable considering the feature of Humana. If no further evidence showing the viability of the program is presented, any conclusion drawn can be hasty.
Finally, the president fails to mention other reasons that can lead to the poor enrollment as well as the financial deficit of the university. There are many reasons that can be responsible for the current situation, say a lack of faculty, poor school ranking or a shortage in labs. If these problems are not solved, only an adoption of the online program may have little use to help the school to thrive.
To sum up, the argument is not well reasoned because the evidence it provide is either flawed or incomplete. To reinforce the argument, the president should try to convince us that the online program in Omni is a success and it will also work here in Humana. Besides, evidence that can be used to clarify the true reasons for the poor situation in Humana is also needed.
我自己觉得最后一点写得特别弱；不过看看字数好像也差不多了，可能是头太重了。还有想问下版主，instruction要求找作者的assumption，那是不是我3段都是要围着assumption来呢？有些话一定要用assumption的形式写出来感觉有点别扭，所以有点迷茫，请赐教！！ |
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发表于 2012-8-14 20:29:28
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