Dive Brief:
- Professors in math-related fields are more likely to get negative evaluations from students, and therefore are less likely to receive tenure, promotion and possibly merit pay, according to a new study by Bob Uttl, a professor of psychology at Mount Royal University.
- Inside Higher Ed reports that the study’s authors said previous research found things like class size or discipline have not made significant differences in student ratings, and suggested that it was most fair to judge quantitative professors by other professors teaching in those fields.
- Supporters of student evaluations say it is incumbent upon institutions to discern how best to utilize them to ensure students’ voices were heard, but Uttl argued it could be difficult to ascertain whether an evaluaition was judging a student’s satisfaction with a course or a teacher’s effectiveness.
Dive Insight:
The value of using student evaluations in judging a professor’s performance is fraught, as there could be a myriad of reasons a student may be unsatisfied with a course besides the professor — they could be frustrated with fulfilling a quantitative requirement, or may be stymied by the difficulty of the subject matter. Or, it could simply be a matter of explicit or implicit bias; research has shown that student evaluations skew against women and racial or ethnic minorities.
One possible alternative could be to gauge the progress of a student’s opinion on a course, rather than one final determination. In numerous K-12 schools and districts, administrators have tried to judge the progress and development a student makes, rather than their expertise in a given subject at the conclusion of a course. Institutions could fashion and insist on an alternative evaluation that tracks students’ opinions on a class over the course of the student’s time in the class. This could also mean the evaluations are less cumbersome, lowering the possibility that a frustrated student completing an evaluation would take it out on the professor’s performance.
Peer evaluations are another option; removed from the frustrations of students that may unduly damage a professor in a quantitative discipline, a peer evaluation can be invaluable. However, the best approach is that none of these options should be considered in isolation, and there are few metrics that should be immediately exclusionary when it comes to considering career advancement for a professor.