Topic Question from GRE-Argument official Pool of Topics

Fifteen years ago, Omega University implemented a new procedure that encouraged students to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of all their professors. Since that time, Omega Professors have begun to assign higher grades I their classes, and overall student grade averages at omega have risen by 30%. Potential employers looking at this dramatic rise in grade, believe that grades at Omega are inflated and do not accurately reflect students achievement; As a result, Omega graduates have not been successful at getting jobs as have graduates from nearby Alpha university. To enable its graduate to secure better jobs, Omega University should terminate student evaluation of 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 Response

As stated by the author, for omega university graduates to secure better jobs they have to terminate the student evaluation of professors. As evidenced in the article, it was stated that potential employers are refusing to employ graduates from Omega University sighting the dramatic rise in grades of the students as the main thrust for this illogical and mal-systemic action.

The author is assuming that the increase in the grades of the students is ambiguously connected to the implementation of the students’ evaluation done fifteen years earlier. Critically analyzing this, it is imperative to answer the following questions to prove the validity of the author’s argument; does it make any logical sense that the whole professors in a university can be influenced to increasing the grades of their students simply because the students are mandated by the same school authority to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching procedures of these professors?  Again, would it be possible that all the students in a particular university need to be assisted in other to have good grades? It is therefore clear, that the author arrived at the aforementioned hasty conclusion because of inadequate analysis of the situation. The author failed to look at the effects of the evaluation done by the students; consequent upon which he made the flawed conclusion. This is because the increase in the overall average grade by 30% would have been as a result of improved teaching techniques arising from the continuous evaluation of the students. Therefore, it is crystal clear that such hasty conclusion cannot hold water and should be refuted until more convincing evidences are provided by the author.

The publication presumptuously assumed that the potential employers attribute the sudden rise in the grades of the students to the evaluation of the professors by these students; and that the potential employers are not hiring graduates from Omega University due to this factor.  Will it be sane to say that “because the people of the United States of America are demanding for a more accountable governance from their leaders, that’s why these leaders in-turn abased themselves to the level of manipulating the same system of governance?” it is worthy of note to take into apt consideration that these potential employers never mentioned or connected their reasons of not engaging graduates from Omega University to the above insinuation, this therefore points to the fact that the author was merely speculating and shouldn’t have arrived at such unwarranted conclusion more attention was first given to full understanding of the argument at hand. Furthermore, this unhealthy assumption by the publication cannot be acceptable without further reasoning on the subject matter.

Conclusively, it is clear from the reasoning, analysis, evaluations and cross-examinations presented above that the hasty conclusion which states that “To enable its graduate to secure better jobs, Omega University should terminate students’ evaluation of the professors” should not be allow to stand. The publication should provide more compelling evidences for further analysis before that statement can be reconsider. But until that is done the recommendation by the author should not be implemented.