"... are correlated with students’ expected grades. Studies have found that, among other things, students score male professors higher than female ones, rate attractive teachers more highly, and reward instructors who bring in cookies. 'It’s not clear what the evaluations are measuring, but in some sense they’re a better instrument for measuring gender or grade expectations than they are for measuring the instructor’s actual value added,' Philip Stark, a UC Berkeley statistics professor who has studied the efficacy of teacher evaluations, told me.
From
"How Teacher Evaluations Broke the University/'We give them all A’s, and they give us all fives'" (The Atlantic)(gift link).
From the last paragraph: "There’s another reason to keep them around. If universities ever did away with students’ ability to grade their professors, college kids—and their tuition-paying parents—might revolt." Isn't that how student evaluations came about in the first place? The students were revolting.
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Universities aren't non-profit. They are there to make $$$. Give A's make money. Give F's the money drops out, or fails out.
How can people not put this fucking scam together?
Universities reward professors for number of students matriculated, garnered grant money, and publicity that benefits the university.
Some things in life - like teacher evaluations - are subjective. People should have enough intelligence to deal with that. I think we did until very recently.
1. Asking students to grade instructors was a dumb idea.
2. Evaluating instructor performance is the responsibility of the administrators and there are better metrics than student surveys.
3. Demanding high admission standards would solve a lot of problems but greed is killing higher education.
Sequester the evaluations. Abort the contract. Offer the students a pro-rated refund.
My favorite student comment that I received was "I would have done better if he had made me do the homework".
That said, I did find some comments helpful.
“ She's an authority on American constitutional law & I have never seen such a talented, devoted and inspirational teacher in my whole life. Her course is really good and she helps students a lot, I don't know why all the people hate her when she's a true human being. I would recommend her courses for all the law students, she's a living legend.”
Truth.
Department of The Obvious.
All evaluations are subjective. Even those with an objective result are to one degree or another subjectively related to desired attributes. What matters is how they are used, not that they exist.
I hated those evaluations even more than the professors did. I avoided filling them out whenever I could. I just didn't feel superior enough to the material the grade the professor.
The war against objective standards is an Atheist thing.
But they can't quite figure out why. It is a total mystery.
I see what you did there!
So I looked him up on Ratemyprofessor.com. I was not surprised that he rated poorly: 2.9/5
Crappy teachers ALWAYS want to get rid of student evaluations--this has been going on for at least 30 years, and the research that supposedly "proves" the bias, etc. always turns out to be laughably shallow.
"Studies have found that, among other things, students score male professors higher than female ones." This particular bit of conventional wisdom just refuses to die. Do you know how "studies have found" this? By comparing the averages scores for each, and in some studies not even controlling for experience or subject. Also, if that were true, then just apply a handicap or an adjustment. But every single time I have asked "Ok, how MUCH do student's over-rate or under-rate by gender?" Anti-evaluation folks refuse to answer.
The reason there is no way of knowing if students over- or under-rate by gender (or race, attractiveness, personality, accent, etc.) is that you'd have to have an objective measurement for how good the teaching was so that you could see how over- or under- the student ratings were. But of course if you HAVE an objective measurement for how good the teaching is, JUST USE THAT.
The fundamental problem is that the things that bad teachers think are somehow illegitimate--professor personality, energy, engagement, even Stupid Teaching Tricks--are actually important contributors to student learning because they help the students pay attention, be engaged, and WANT to learn the material. "Prof. X is merely entertaining the students" is a common bogus complain. But if you entertain them, then they pay attention, come to class, do the reading, participate, and LEARN. Isn't that the point?
It is quite possible that there too tight a correlation between grades and evaluations (though we didn't see a high correlation when we dug into that at my institution about 10 years ago). But that ship has long sailed. For about 15 years (20-30 at places like Harvard and Stanford) the grade curve is centered on a B+ or A- and the only way to get below a B- is to not turn the work in. There isn't enough spread in the grade distribution to make giving high grades a good strategy for getting high evals. The average gps in all divisions at Stanford and Harvard last year (yes, including STEM) was 3.8!
Finally, if a 25-cent Dunkin Munchkin can greatly bias student evaluations, then just give everybody Munchkins that day instead of whining about it.
High student evaluations shouldn't ever be the only factor that goes into determining if someone is a good professor, but that are an important factor in teaching effectiveness.
The argument over evaluation is one of the major problems that come from bad and failed teachers becoming administrators, who then try to force everyone to be just as crappy and ineffective teachers as they were.
WHO should decide if professors are good?
WHO should decide if schools are good?
WHO should decide if degrees are good?
WHY are people WASTING their (MY!) money on cookies?
Learn a trade..
Quit wasting your time (and MY money) on obsolete schools of "learning"
Can't blame the boys for this one. Female students expect other women, including female professors, to be more lenient and nurturing. When professors don't conform to these stereotypes, female students get very, very angry.
I have been in higher ed for 35 years, the last 30 or so as someone who does annual evaluations and reviews the student perception data. It is shared with the instructor as well. They can point out flaws or trends that need some improvement. If half of the class says the instructor was always late to class, well … if half says the teacher was often unprepared, something to talk about. If the School mean is 3.9, and someone consistently gets 1.8, I might want to know why. I guess after all these years I have found that some of the toughest graders in the toughest classes get the highest evaluations—students respect them more so than the so-called easy professor.
Sounds a lot like 'we pretend to teach them, and they pretend to thank us'.
Christopher B said...
Department of The Obvious.
All evaluations are subjective. Even those with an objective result are to one degree or another subjectively related to desired attributes. What matters is how they are used, not that they exist.
Education. Journalism. Communications. Human Resources. Economics. Women's Studies. Psychology.
These disciplines were all created with the specific intent to adjust the parameters of subjective evaluations as they are broadly used in society.
I agree the students are revolting. They stink on ice.
In the inner city high school where I taught this was my grading scale:
1. Show up in class more days than not - C
2. Bring any two of the following three (book, paper, pencil) to class: B- as that was above average. First name on work turned in kicked it to a B. Add a last name and it was a B+.
3. Any work turned in at all was an A- . If some of it was correct pushes the grade to a A. Actual thinking, correct or incorrect,was an A+.
An average class had IQ hovering between 70 - 90.
No students read on grade level with senior high classes averaging about 4th grade reading level.
I jest but not much. I sent my daughter to Catholic schools (avg IQ 100 -120) where everyone reads on level or higher.
It's parental malpractice to send your child to most - not all - public schools.
The very thought of Bela Bellasa, David Harvey or Steve Hanke bringing cookies to a class boggles my 70 year old mind.
I was in college in the 70s and we evaluated profs. What's different now? Higher costs, so you have to keep students happy.
The solution to the grade inflation problem is simple and obvious and will NEVER be adopted from within a given school because it is a collective action problem. Grading needs to be done by someone other than the class professor, and there needs to be a forced grade distribution.
This approach, by the way, would go a long way towards slowing down the AI disaster that is starting to wash over colleges: If the "grades" you own professor gives you are on assignments throughout the semester are really just feedback (which is what their main purpose should be) and our actual grade-payoff for the course is determined by some outside, anonymous evaluator, you have MUCH more incentive to do that actual work assigned yourself and not use AI tools: all those assignments are training for the final evaluation and the grades on them simple tell you how well you are doing, so there's no incentive at all to cheat on them.
But this will never happen from within the universities. For one thing, since there is no $ to hire a whole bunch of external examiners or graders, external examining would have to become part of each professor's workload: the shrieking that would result would probably knock the moon from its orbit and destroy us all.
We're in 1535 right now, and yet no one with any power inside Academia is doing the slightest thing to head off the Dissolution that is headed our way.
Evals are very useful but indirectly so. Anyone with experience knows how to assess them for trends and notable issues. Hard teachers aren't necessarily good teachers and "easy" teachers are necessarily bad or grade inflaters. It is about learning. And like with coaching different methods can work but the goal is to win or at least compete as well as they can.
Addendum: Anything above a 7% failure rate is unofficial grounds for being fired. Everyone passes and that problem is solved and you receive praise.
American college educational model is broken. High school, for many college students, provided greater academic challenge, certainly more "homework", and less opportunity to game system. Universities and colleges have become havens for tenured faculty and senior administrators, drawing big salaries and numerous perks, while undergrads are taught mostly by poorly compensated and often overworked adjunct faculty and graduate students. The prestigious universities have huge endowments, yet expect to be subsidized on backs of American taxpayers who gain no genuine benefit from their mandated support of huge university administrations, large numbers of patronage and DEI jobs, lackluster academics, and easy grading. Your DEI doctor, if educated at an American medical school and American undergraduate program, may be unqualified to provide competent medical care, given unearned advantages in school acceptance grades, equitable grading, and imposed DEI policies.
I am a graduate of a Harvard graduate school, predominantly male student body at time I attended. While I was on-campus, it was obvious undergrads had little to no homework, because campus was playtime weekends, and only slightly less so weekdays. My graduate program was and is still subpar, taught by patronage-selected adjunct instructors and dinosaur tenured professors. Many of my fellow students failed to complete assignments, didn't read course books, and had their wives/girlfriends openly assist in their course papers and projects. Female students were sexually harassed, openly denigrated, poorly served by university policies and administrative leadership.
How much has school tuition increased since the late 20th century?
how much have graduation rates increased since then?
what about employment rates? promotions? general satisfaction?
WHAT are we paying these increased tuitions FOR?
i mean, other than to make college admins RICH?
The idea started with the “students as the customer” business approach. And giving everyone an A does satisfy the customer on average, but pisses off the students who actually earn the A. Grades are what makes you do your homework rather than go to the party, there are always parties.
In a world like grad school you either do the work or you get thrown out, even today, at least for PhD programs, good masters programs require a comprehensive exam. So it seems what has been done is turn undergrad into advanced high school and expect serious students to go to grad school, which makes more money for Universities.
And I don’t think that if profs get low ratings it is so bad for them, unless they get accused of some bias thing.
And by the way, at least when I was on the tenure committee we mostly ignored the numeric averages but paid incredibly close attention to the written, subjective comments. We read every single evaluation a candidate had received (so often >600 of them) and look for patterns. I can tell you that a lot of students saying "the course was too hard!" did NOT hurt a candidate's chances, but a consistent pattern of comments, across multiple courses, of "very disorganized," "didn't return graded papers for weeks," "didn't give enough feedback," "was never in Office Hours," or "canceled almost half of the Friday classes," could doom someone whose raw numbers would have looked just fine.
How did you (our host) feel about student evaluation when you were professing?
Prof. M. Drout @ 10:47 said...
Amen!
"Welcome to Social Psychology! "
"The war against objective standards is an Atheist thing."
Thanks for the laugh.
Some of my students were pretty revolting.
Most were pretty good.
I had the advantage of teaching adults. Most of whom worked and knew something of the world.
John Henry
When I was an undergrad I did an evaluation of a polisci prof--a guy I actually liked and respected--by filling out the card with an attractive pattern.
During an office conference with him a few weeks later he mentioned how some clown had screwed the eval by fillng out the card with an attractive pattern.
I confessed, and he explained how important it was to get serious feedback from the evals. He was pissed but we remained on good terms, and like many of the best profs at Memphis Mistake he went on to better things at better schools, so I don't think the eval made that much difference.
I continued to be creative on the bubble cards from time to time.
I first attended college in the late seventies and cheaters were looked down on by fellow students, went back for computer science in the nineties and cheating seemed like the norm. I know I took a couple of low grades due to the deadly combination of grading on a curve and rampant cheating. It didn’t bother me very much.
Some decades later the shoe was on the other foot, but I only taught three sections of history survey and only recall a student evaluation once--which I escaped because I literally missed the memo, which was placed in my little mail slot at the History Department office, which I seldom checked.
I was told that I could wait until the next time I taught a class section, which turned out to be never.
So I guess I'll never know if I was any good.
I used to look at RateMyProfessor from time to time, and was struck by the comments left by many students of a very prominent scholar of the ACWABAWS who used to slum at the old soc. and alt. history newsgroups.
They were usually some variant of "Professor X is one of the most intelligent and well-informed people you'll ever meet in your life--as he will be sure to tell you in the first few minutes of the class."
For years I had employee evaluations at my company. After years of it, I reviewed the effectiveness. I found that they had zero effect at improving employees. People do not change just because someone says they should, and even with financial rewards at stake, they still seem unable to change even the smallest things. For example, people who are chronically late will continue to be until you either decide to fire them or ignore the problem. Some people are worth ignoring it, but if you are not that great, you will be promising to change for the 10th time on your way out the door. I no longer do evaluation. Managers talk, and they know the issues first hand, so when they decide someone is excelling, they decide to raise their pay so we don't lose them. That's it.
Re tuition at InterAmerican university, private, Presbyterian affiliated
Undergrad 1972-76 $26 per credit, most classes 3credits,some science 4 credits. 120 credits for ba
Tuition locked in as long as you continued studying. Navy paid 75%
Grad school '76-79 $60 credit, 36 credits fo MA in biz admin (not called MBA at the time) ditto lock in.
Southern New Hampshire univ 2001-03 I str @$200/credit for my msbe. I think 36 credits.
John Henry
RCOCEAN II,
Thank you for covering this. Just logged in to make sure someone said it.
"How Teacher Evaluations Broke the University/'We give them all A’s, and they give us all fives'"
Reminds me of the old Polish (Communist era) joke :
"We pretend to work. And they pretend to pay us."
I never read student reviews. I figured if there was something important I should know, the dean would tell me about it. Otherwise I just focused on teaching and ignored the b.s.
"since there is no $ to hire a whole bunch of external examiners or graders".
Oddly enough the HUGE increase in funding of both K-12 and colleges per student corresponds almost perfectly with the explosion of non-teaching, administrative positions. So what admin functions that did not exist in, say 1975, are so vital they could not move resources to "graders" today? Bet I could find a few.
@Prof. Drout: You are correct that grade inflation is a collective action problem. The solution is relatively simple. College accreditors should require that schools comply with a forced curve (e.g., an average grade of C+ or B-) as a condition of accreditation. The federal government has the power to require that accreditors adopt such a rule. Problem solved.
Note to host: The students ARE revolting. In so many ways.
If you work in a large company or corporation, you will be evaluated annually by your bosses. It's important for our educational institutions to accurately represent life outside academia.
It's also not uncommon for management to say that they never give a perfect score on an annual evaluation to anyone because "there's always room to improve."
"How did you (our host) feel about student evaluation when you were professing?"
As my post shows, it was something that was adopted to appease students in the old student protest era. It never made much sense, but it couldn't be taken away. I think in the end the school got rid of them because it decided they were channeling bias or some such thing.
I remember being incredibly disgusted when my colleagues had to vote on the question whether to use class time to for filling out the forms after they became something that you do on line (as opposed to paper forms that you had to distribute and collect) and the decision was made to keep using class time. I don't think you should waste any of the in-class time!
"So I guess I'll never know if I was any good."
I was at a friend's one time, a guy who majored in history like I did and ended up teaching at the community college part time (he was a fulltime bartender/manager). He told me about picking up a hitchhiker recently and discovering that the young guy had had one of my courses, and said I was the best (history?) teacher he ever had.
I'll take it.
It's a vicious cycle. To attract students, colleges provide all sorts of amenities. Tuition goes up to pay for them (and for all the administrators). Then parents complain about having to pay all that money for the low grades their kids get, so grading is skewed upward.
College campuses that I knew relatively well 30-40-50 years ago are unrecognizable now with all the new construction. To be fair, often it's corporate construction for all the universities' tech company spin-offs. It's hard to tell. All that blends in nicely with the new gyms and student centers and multimedia labs.
And of course ... the draft.
The students were revolting.
Well, some of them were kinda badly dressed, but revolting...?
@Dave Begley: heh
I taught high school for ten years the last four of which I also attended law school evenings. There are advantages and disadvantages to going evenings, one advantage being that most of your classmates bring work and life experiences to the classroom. Nevertheless, my observation was that in assessing professors, they were heavily influenced by superficial considerations of style. I rarely filled out an evaluation because, as a student, I felt I lacked the expertise to assess the merit of the instructors. Certainly I liked some far better than others. Did that mean they were better at conveying the appropriate material? I don't know that.
'72 HS grad
'74 Junior College grad
'76 Big Ten University grad
'81 Midwest Law School grad
I never, not once, was offered an opportunity to review an instructor, so that whole deal is foreign to me. I did write reviews of lawyers I supervised for 30+ years where I worked, and I was reviewed myself, so I'm familiar with that end of it..
Law school: As a general rule, the least popular professors among the students were the best instructors. I learned more from them by far. The unpopularity stemmed from difficult exams, and by the non-coddling and intimidation of students in class.
Years later I wrote them letters, thanking them for better preparing me for the real world. They all responded and surprisingly (to me) remembered me.
Being a faculty librarian and head of a small department, of course I evaluated and was evaluated. No part of my job caused as much agita' as evaluations.
Our dean may have held the record for non-submission of annual evaluations, required for all twenty-someodd library faculty. I believe we went six or seven years without, though we were not allowed much leeway for those we had to do on our staff.
Knowing that we were not going to get either reward or regard for getting good evals took a lot of sting out of the delay.
“ Course-evaluation scores..."
"... are correlated with students’ expected grades. Studies have found that, among other things, students score male professors higher than female ones, rate attractive teachers more highly, and reward instructors who bring in cookies.”
Well, of course. But what does that have to do with grades?Most students are now female, so they’re going to prefer attractive males who bring them cookies, no matter what grade they get.
If they want to evaluate professors, shouldn't they just look at grades in subsequent classes?
As a graduate of a military academy, this whole thing is inconceivable to me.
At MIT and Carnegie Mellon, course evals were, at least in the 1980s, 100% student-run. They have no connection to the faculty and have nothing to do with contracts or appointments, and all the results--every single comment and numeric rating--are fully public. Students used the evaluation book to help determine which sections to take and which professors to avoid ("His accent is impossible to understand" is the kind of evaluation that universities HATE but students really deserve to know before they build their schedules around a particular section).
That said, it's been my experience over 28 years that course evaluations tend to correlate, quite closely, with in-person teaching observations, focus-talks with small groups of randomly selected students, all the various "student outcomes" b.s. that turns out to be just a disguised version of traditional evals ("on a scale of 1-5, rate how well you believe you met the following "Learning Goals") and various other proxy measures of teacher effectiveness.
So while I agree that theoretically a better measure of teacher effectiveness would be to test the students before and after the class and compare the increase in scores, I have to tell you that absolutely no one is willing to invest the time and money that would be required to do that, not to mention that the "high-stakes testing" waters have been so muddied by decades of contradictory and politicized 'research' that no one knows how to create such a set of tests. A huge contributor to the whole mess, at every level, is Bill Gates' disastrous "Common Core" stuff, which was both a huge failure even in its own terms and poisoned the discussion around more effective evaluation.
What we are likely to end up with, as our incompetent and self-dealing Administrator-class gets its hooks deeper and deeper into the classroom, is some idiotic numeric measurement that will be massively time-consuming, gamed by the crappy professors who will spend their time figuring out how to game it, and destructive of actual good teaching, which won't fit neatly into the boxes that the failed professors who become administrators will create.
yah, an opportunity to rant or suck up for the next class or something…my wife is still traumatized by a bad exit interview of a staffer…mostly valid criticism…
I hated managers who did that "no perfect score" on eval shite. The evaluation is supposed to be at THAT point in time based on your performance TO DATE with the tools, training, staff, and budget you have. When a manager told me that horseshite, I gave him notice. I got $5,000 more a year in another restaurant chain within a week. Guess what? There was no more room for improvement at that company because managers saved their bonus money and raises for their buddies and the female managers they were sleeping with. But .... I ...... improved. My workplace and my salary
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