Essay Evaluation-2 please

[salil31]

The following appeared in a letter from the faculty committee to the president of Seatown University:

A study conducted at nearby Oceania University showed that faculty retention is higher when professors are offered free tuition at the university for their own college-aged children. Therefore, Seatown should institute a free-tuition policy for its professors for the purpose of enhancing morale among the faculty and luring new professors.


Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.

The argument, as appeared in a letter from the faculty commmittee, stresses on waiving tution fee for the children of faculty. It cites an study conducted as its source and emphasizes to consider the issue as very important. In rest of the essay, I'll present my case to evaluate the scenario critically.

Firstly, faculty committee claims that they can apply the results of a particular study, conducted at the nearby Oceania University, to their own Seatown University. Without furnishing the underlying assumptions and common factors between these two Universitites, the committee proposes a precis highlighting the same issue as faced by both University. It would be worth to look at the environment, if they match closely to one another, in order to proceed further in this case. Without specific evidences like dataset of the study, factors considered, methodolgy, one may not be in a position to project the same in their own ambiance.

Secondly, letter underscores the lack of morale among faculty members. It is likely to boost morale by including free-tuition policy in faculty's agreement, but it will be worthwhile to look and conduct the study to gather the age-related data of professors' children. It may be superficial to assume that their childern fall in collge-age parameters. It is solely not necessary to work always as one will have to consider other factors too.

Thirdly, the problem lies in recruiting new professors. As in line with the University's policy, if they are looking for young, dynamic faculty members or experienced ones. Free-tuition might attract the latter ones, depending on the reputaion of Seatown University, but in order to attract young, dynamic professors this clause may not do any good as their childern will have to wait to get the free-tuition advantage. It may also be the case if University's incentive is to retain the faculty for as long as possible, which is the case here.

In conclusion, first one has to check the validity and further applicability of study to Seatown Unversity in accordance with the policy framework. If successfull, further data like surveying faculty's families to gather children's age related data might add other useful insights and may boost the morale of existing and present a prosperous scenario to the new professors.

[tommywallach]

Hey Salil,

This essay is much stronger than your last one. Great work. You still have a number of writing issues, but you seem clearer on your thesis and your examples here, and it keeps you clear. However, stay away from big words if you're not 100% sure what they mean ("ambiance," for example, is used incorrectly in this essay). You're better off being simple and clear.

The only thing you missed is that while this program increased retention rates, that doesn't mean it will help bring new people in. You went on a tangent about young people, but they prompt never said it needed young people, just new professors. The age point was already made quite well in the previous paragraph (their professors may not have any kids in the range), and this just remakes it. The main flaw here is that retaining the people you have is not the same as bringing in new people. Could be that all schools offer this perk now, so it will do nothing to differentiate the university in the marketplace.

Otherwise, your first two examples are great, and the writing is relatively clear. You still need to work on the grammar and vocabulary, but the solid structure here would get a good score.

-t