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The following appeared in the editorial section of a campus newspaper.
“Because occupancy rates for campus housing fell during the last academic year, so did housing revenues. To solve the problem, campus housing officials should reduce the number of available housing units, thereby increasing the occupancy rates. Also, to keep students from choosing to live off-campus, housing officials should lower the rents, thereby increasing demand.”
Discuss how well reasoned... etc.

The argument claims that, as a consequence of lower occupancy rates, housing revenues have fell during the last academic year, and campus housing officials should tackle this issue by reducing the number of available housing units and by lowering rents, thus increasing demand. The author fails to consider some facts that are crucial for the well reasoning of the argument, which is flawed and presents some major problems.

First, the author states that reducing the number of available housing units is an effective way of fighting the decline in housing revenues. The statement is a scratch and is not based on subjunctive evidence. The author implies a direct relationship between occupancy rate – a mere percentage – and housing revenues, without considering that the number of housing units and the rent amounts are the only factors influencing housing revenues. Occupancy rates are useful for campus housing officials to estimate if there are too many empty rooms, which may indicate that prices are too high or that the number of housing units compared to the number of campus students is exaggerated. The suggestion of the author of reducing the housing units may be effective in reducing costs such as maintenance cost or cleaning cost, but it could not influence revenues, so this statement is poorly reasoned.

Second, the author claims that lowering rents would increase demand for housing units, thus boosting revenues. Even though this statement is slightly more acceptable than the previous one, because generally lower prices could give rise to higher demand, it features a key weakness: there is no evidence whatsoever that students who choose to live off-campus only consider price as a factor. For instance, students may prefer living out of the campus to have a higher degree of independence or to be closer to their families. As a consequence, reducing the rents does not guarantee in any way that demand for housing units would rise.

Furthermore, another flaw in the statement above is that even if lower rents may cause higher demand, one could not know whether revenues would grow. To illustrate this, assume a 20% decrease on rents, attracting 30 students to live on campus. There is no evidence that revenues are higher, even though occupancy rates certainly is (from x to x + 30). Thus, this statement is not acceptable and the campus housing officials should not take it into account.

To sum up, the argument presents three big flaws that make it unconvincing. The author could have strengthened his claims by providing data showing a positive relationship between higher demand for housing units and revenues and by avoiding the already mentioned leap of faith and poor reasoning mistakes.