essay - GMAT: Argument 16

The following appeared as part of an article in the education section of a Waymarsh city newspaper:

"Throughout the last two decades, those who earned graduate degrees found it very difficult to get jobs teaching their academic specialties at the college level. Those with graduate degrees from Waymarsh University had an especially hard time finding such jobs. But better times are coming in the next decade for all academic job seekers, including those from Waymarsh. Demographic trends indicate that an increasing number of people will be reaching college age over the next 10 years; consequently, we can expect that the job market will improve dramatically for people seeking college-level teaching positions in their fields."

Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

Answer:
The author concludes that a labor market for academic job seekers will dramatically improve because the demand will increase in the next 10 years. As an evidence of the upcoming demand, the author cites that more people will be reaching college age in the next 10 years. This argument, however, has several serous flaws.

First, the most important, the author has not clearly mentioned the root cause of difficulty of job seekers for finding academic jobs. Although it seems that the author merely relates the difficulty to low demand, and the author indicates that increasing demand will resolve the current issue, the true reason of the severe situation may be in another place. That is, for instance, the reason why people with graduate degrees have trouble finding their jobs in an academic field is just that the rate of people enrolling universities has been decreasing owning to a nationwide depression, or that the competitive structure for academic jobs has changed for instance to the situation where those who have business experiences are highly competitive. Therefore, since the conclusion is based on the wrong assumption, it is unconvincing.

Second, the author mentions an increasing number of people who reach college age as a source of the demand of academic jobs, but this reasoning is wrong. Admittedly, there's a trend that the demand increases in proportion to the increase of population. However, it is also true that all people who have reached the age don't go to college. Therefore, the author should have shown evidence that clearly shows the increase of demand such as an expected number of college students in the 10 years.

Finally, the author states that Waymarsh University faces more difficult situation than the other universities, and he tacitly makes the readers infer that the situation will also be improved. However, there's no evidence that the increased demand will increase the number of applicants for the university, because the situation of the university may be quite different from the ones of the other universities. For instance, the increased difficulty that those who have degrees of Waymarsh University find the jobs in an academic field may be related to the poor quality of the faculty.

In sum, since the argument have serious flaws that I mentioned above, the author fails to convince the readers that in the next decade the current situation will be mitigated because of the increased demand. To strengthen the argument, the author at least provides the information of causal relationship between the current difficulty and the decreased demand and clear evidence which proves the increased demand in his argument.