038 Because occupancy rates for campus housing fell during t

[Erin]

38. The following appeared in the editorial section of a campus newspaper.

“Because occupancy rates for campus housing fell during the last academic year, so did housing revenues. To solve the problem, campus housing officials should reduce the number of available housing units, thereby increasing the occupancy rates. Also, to keep students from choosing to live off-campus, housing officials should lower the rents, thereby increasing demand.”

[wecacuee]

The problem stated in this argument is the decrease of revenues because of decrease of occupancy rates for campus housing. The suggested solution is to decrease the number of available housing units and to decrease the rents.
Since there is no information available about why the occupancy rates have fell, the author has forced himself to assume the reason of low occupancy rates. If the reason has been poor hiegine and poor maintainance of campus housing then even lowering of rents may not increase the housing revenues. Decrease of rents is more likely to increase the occupancy rates, but to assume that the increase in revenues due to increase in occupancy will supercede the decrease in revenue due to decrease in rent is not prudent.
There is no information about how the campus housing is owned by the authorities. If campus housing is owned by authorities, then decreasing the number of available housing units will only cause an increase in losses. Unavailable housing units are not going to earn authorities any income. It would have been a better solution, if the author had pointed out some money making use of the the unavailable housing units.
The author has jumped to conclusion without doing proper research on why the occupancy rates have declined. The other major reasons could have been lack of expected facilities at campus housing or lack of freedom due to imposition of disciplinary rules. In these cases, none of the solutions suggested by the author would be as effective as improving the facilities and relaxing of some disciplinary rules.
In some of the cases the solutions suggested by author can even backfire. Consider a case that the rents of campus housing are so low that living in campus housing is considered to be negative status symbol. Decreasing the rent will only deteriorate that image.
Author should find out the main reason why the occupancy of campus housing has decreased and then try tofind out some solution find som