“In the past few years, Fern Valley University has been experiencing has suffered from a decline in both enrollments and admissions applications. The reasons can be discovered from our students who most often cite poor teaching and inadequate library resources as their chief sources of dissatisfaction with Fern Valley. Therefore, in order to increase the number of students attending our university, and hence to gain our position as the most prestigious university in the greater Fern valley metropolitan area, it is necessary to initiate fund-raising campaign among the alumni that will enable us to expand the range of subjects and to increase the size of our library facilities.”
The author argues that since Fern Valley University's students cite poor teaching and inadequate library resources as sources of dissatisfaction, the enrollments and admissions applications at Fern Valley University has declined and to increase the enrollments and admissions applications the University must have a fund-raising campaign that will help them to widen the range of subjects taught and increase the size of their library facilities. The author uses several assumptions to arrive at these conclusions without providing the evidence that supports them or without considering other possible factors that could result in such consequences. For these reasons I find that the argument is indeed flawed and therefore unconvincing. I will explain my views in the following paragraphs.
Firstly, the author assumes that fund raising will not only eliminate the problem of low enrollments and admissions applications but also assumes that it will help the university become the most prestigious institution in the area, which is a bit of a stretch. The author does not provide any evidence that doing so will bring about such a result. Moreover, the author goes on to assume that expanding the range of subjects taught would resolve the issue. The way to resolve the problem of poor teaching would be to train the teachers to better educate the pupils, otherwise what would widening the range of subjects do if the teachers are not able to teach the students well? Nothing much. Therefore, the author needs to provide the proof necessary that would support his statement.
Secondly, the author assumes that poor teaching and inadequate library resources brought about the low number of students applying and enrolling at the university, which may not necessarily be the case. When the students were asked to provide some problems they may have mentioned a problem that come up right off the top of their head, even though the college is performing very well compared to other colleges. Moreover the university may be a prestigious college that has a lot of requirements that must be met by students. Most students may have felt less confident, discovering what the school requires in order to enroll or they may have felt intimidated by how they would have to keep up with the program. The author must provide the evidence necessary to support the claim that it was a consequence of poor teaching and insufficient library resources that students are applying and enrolling at Fern University year after year.
In sum, the argument could be strengthened by considering several factors that may affect the way the author arrived at those conclusions he or she arrived at and by providing the evidence that solidifies his or her statements.
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Mari