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Prompt:
Thefollowing appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at BuckinghamCollege.
"Toserve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build anumber of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on currenttrends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitoryspace inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town hasrisen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasinglydifficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitorieswould make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
Write aresponse in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate theargument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
My response:Housing convenience and price areimportant factors perspective students put into their pro-con list whenweighing out their college offers. It is considerable for the college to takethe students' quality of life on campus into consideration and to view theimpact of the housing conditions in a long-term horizon. However, the decisionof grand investment in order to increase the on-campus housing capacity toaccommodate the increasing enrollment and to attract even greater number ofenrollment should be measured carefully over solid evidence that this conductis necessary and sustainable in the long term run.
Though intending to take advantage of thegrowing enrollment trend as an affirmation of the dorm-building suggestion, theauthor evaded from the exact of the accretion rate of the enrollment rate;neither did he provide further information about the distribution of the futureenrollment types. For example, if the increase span is less than 5% annually,the cost of new dorm building and the actually housing need driven by theincreasing enrollment should be reevaluated, which would consequentially weakenthe author's argument. If the majority of the future enrollment is contributedby the online registration, the students might not need to be physically oncampus to attend classes. Thus the proposal of building new dorms would appearunwarranted under such circumstances.
The author also quoted the risingapartment rent in town and arrived at the deduction that "students willfind it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing," indicatingthat building new dorms on campus would alleviate such situations. However, supplementaryevidence such as abundant housing on campus would actually turn out to be affordableto corroborate his recommendation. Unless proven that the rent for these dormsare very competitive over the ones elsewhere in town, putting the author'srecommendation into practice would not turn out to be as beneficial as it ispresumed.
In addition, used as an advantageoussupport, the "new" condition of these dorm rooms serves to attractgreater numbers of enrollment. However, the housing condition would appearquestionable if seen in 50 years from now (since the author seem to have takenthe long-term economic effect of the dorms into consideration) unlessadditional evidence supports that these dorms will be maintained to a like-newcondition in the future.
In sum, the college's attempt to betteraccommodate the students and contribute to the school's growth in a long termrun is admirable. In order to carry out the recommendation in a persuasivefashion, however, the argument will require statistic evidence to better bringout the enrollment growth trend in relation to the number of additional dormsrequired; it also takes additional explanation to the distribution of on campusstudents, the remote ones and the commuters. Finally, to make a sustainablemove, the college also needs to take the wear and tear of the building into discussionsince construction a new building is not a one-time investment. Maintenanceexpenditure could mount as the building ages. |
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发表于 2012-10-25 10:10:08
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