essay - GMAT: Argument 36

The following appeared as part of a recommendation from the financial planning office to the administration of Fern Valley University:

In the past few years, Fern Valley University has suffered from a decline in both enrollments and admissions applications. The reason 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 regain our position as the most prestigious university in the greater Fern Valley metropolitan area, it is necessary to initiate a fund-raising campaign among the alumni that will enable us to expand the range of subjects we teach and to increase the size of our library facilities.

Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

Answer:
The author of the recommendation says that Fern Valley University should entice contributions from alumni and invest the money in increasing the number of subjects and the size of its library in order to tackle a recent decline of the number of admissions and enrollments. The premise that the author stands on is a voice of the students saying that teaching is poor and the library resources are inadequate. His reasoning, however, has a significant flaw.

His flaw is that his proposal won't solve issues that the university has. That is, first, whereas the students appoint poor teaching, his proposal suggests expansion of the number of subjects. Will expanding the number of subjects solve students' dissatisfaction toward poor teaching? Probably not. It's precisely because students don't mention the number of subjects as their complain, and mainly because the heart of the problem lies with other places. Improper methods of teaching, a poor system of sharing information among faculty about the status of students, or simply, unhappy and inertia teachers complaining low salaries might be the problem for instance. Therefore, it's plausible that his proposed solution won't achieve his target.

Although his second proposed solution is to increase the size of the library facilities, this will also fail to reach the heart of the problem with a high possibility. The students mention inadequate library resources, not the size of the library. They possibly concern about the balance of genre, or maybe the obsolescent books. Therefore, simply increasing the size of the library and books won't solve the problem with a high prospective.

In conclusion, his proposal is inadequate for combating problems that the university has been suffering from. To make a convincing proposal, the author, in the first place, needs to analyze the root causes again and develop solutions that directly reach the heart of the problems.