Toothless Anyway

I thought the site was a good idea originally but they declined to publish an honest but negative review of a professor because it was not consistent with “site guidelines". It fell well short of libel or defamation. I just think the professor probably complained and the site was intimidated into taking it down.

John, at 1:55 pm EDT on July 16, 2007

rate my date

I’m a divorced professor who is dating, and using an online dating service. Some of the people I get in contact with are other academics. I look them up on ratemyprofessors.com to see what their students think of them. The kids have clued me in to a few potential disasters.

Biology prof, at 1:45 am EDT on September 10, 2007

How about Rate My Boss?

As these kids graduate from colleges, they can jump to this complementary siteto rate my boss at RateMyBossCafe.com

I find this fascinating since traditionally the managed class have little chance or is very hard to voice against the people in power. The Web turns the table around to a more optimalbalance.

May, Rate my boss also?, at 5:55 am EST on February 3, 2008

try www.askthealumni.com

better IMHO

Steve Sanders, at 12:10 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

RMP abuse

The study should have sampled profs at various institutions, since institutional cultures vary greatly. Because it is anonymous, RMP can be abused, not just in terms of student vitriol, but by vindictive colleagues under especially stressful circumstances. When budget cuts loomed at my former job—where I taught as a non-TT FT prof for 10 years and where no professor (asst., assoc. or full) in my department had tenure—character assassination went beyond the usual academic politics. I feel certain one comment on RMP was written by a former administrator and art educator, with whom I conflicted regarding my poor treatment. The phrase “disregard for lesson planning” is used, which is neither a phrase I used in class nor something a student would say; a student would say syllabus. (Not only did I always utilize a syllabus, I was actually criticized by students and colleagues for doing so!) RMP can help schools fire teachers!

Margaret McCann, at 2:30 pm EDT on April 25, 2008

Alan—re “nothing gets you listed on the ‘naughty list’ more quickly than refusing to hear your students alternative points of view/interpretations or if you fail to discuss issues that students bring up in the classroom"—true, but that depends on the issue; students also need teachers to guide them through their immaturity to adult thought and action. This ‘perception factor’ can be abused in dysfunctional schools and administrative hatchet-people. For example, I had a student who refused to do any assigned work. I explained (to no avail) that because I had to grade him, I had to establish some criteria to know his work was for this, and not his other, painting class, and that the assignments were challenging and produced strong results. (Students told me later that the other painting profs had actually announced in their class that I was ‘not supposed to be giving assignments’! No one ever told me that; most of the other profs teaching this class had given assignments, and those who hadn’t gave everyone an “A,” even though the Dean had said grade inflation was a problem.) I gave this student a “D", which became a huge issue, and I was pressured by the administration to change it. I let the student do extra work and raised it to a “C". This student later apologized, but the perceptual damage, fanned by colleagues, had been done.

Margaret McCann, at 1:30 pm EDT on April 27, 2008

Jane: Quit Whinning Professors!

I beleive I am a good professor, having been told so by many students as well as coworkers! However, recently checking RMP, there is a very negative comment there about me. I feel I know the student who left it. This student notoriously came to class unprepared, repeatedly asked the same questions despite my answering them, and got really angry when she failed my first exam! She even degraded me for pointing out exactly where in the textbook to find the information after answering her questions stating that translates to me not knowing my subject! I give reviews for my exams and she didn’t really pay attention to them, instead she would sit there rolling her eyes, sighing loudly, and talking with another student. She was visibly upset when approaching the comprehensive final exam and I mentioned they need to know everything from the first of the semester on. This was misinterpreted by her to mean they “. . .need to know ‘everything’ about everything and that is impossible!” She became a real class disruption during the course and made enemies of many of her class mates (all but one or maybe two!) Everyone began complaining about her, and in my many attempts to deal with her, the problems escalated further. This student was extremely rude and unprofessional in class and I was unable to have her removed from the class due to time constraints and technicalities. Because of this one negative comment on RMP now, does this accurately account for me being a bad professor because good professors do not get bad ratings? Come on. Now, perhaps this maybe clear!

Annonymous 1, at 9:40 am EDT on May 27, 2008

RMP is the only way to compare profs without retaking a course

As a student, the chili peppers churn my stomach. Aren’t we supposed to be learning to interact with people on a *professional* level?

In spite of that, I do still use the site because it is pretty much THE only reference out there. Serious students who want a prof that they will actually *learn* under use it too. I would LOVE to see a better regulated site that wouldn’t allow multiple reviews from one person, reviews from colleagues instead of students, etc. But this is what we’re stuck with, and you can usually tell when someone is just on a personal vendetta.

I had a Spanish 201 prof once (at a different college) who would spend half our class time talking IN ENGLISH about an AMERICAN politician she didn’t like. I only bothered coming to class because of the “attendance and participation” part of our grade; as in, sit there and burn an hour a day agreeing with her in whichever language you prefer. Come on, don’t tell me that it would have been SO horrible for me to have known about her agendas beforehand? (PS those of you who do this, it just makes *your* party look bad)

If you don’t like RMP, regulate yourselves. Set course standards so there isn’t so much variance between two professors for the EXACT SAME COURSE. When one prof consistently turns in grades well below or above other sections of the same course, that is up to YOU to regulate. Make them use the same textbooks for the same course. Have peer reviews where you sit in on one another’s classes. Equalize the professors, and we’ll stop feeling the need to compare them.

RMP has only come into its current popularity because there is SUCH a difference from section to section in everything from book prices to topics actually covered (favorite music band v. Plato?) to grading curves (AND breakdowns; if one prof has the final be 5% while another has it be 25% for example) to favoritism to availability of office hours for extra help. It is up to YOU to peer-regulate this.

On the other hand, if you think that having SO much variety is OK, then why is it such a problem for us to know what particular variation we’re signing up for when we register? The main explanation that I hear in favor of all this “variety” is that it allows for students of different “learning styles.” Wouldn’t it make sense then for students to know which prof best matches their “learning style” instead of going “grab bag?” If students can’t “shop around,” then there is really NO argument (that I’ve encountered) to explain why so much variation should be allowed (or encouraged) for the SAME course.

Of course, the core problem is that we learn the best when we’re graded the hardest, and grades are then used as the measure of how much we know (D students tend to be bad, but for good students, learning more and getting a B versus showing off what you already know and getting an A can be a hard choice). We can’t fix this, but you can try to regulate yourselves to level the playing field a bit.

And I still hate the chili peppers.

Mixed views, Not all profs are created equal, at 6:20 am EDT on July 5, 2008

Sometimes. But when?

No-one believes that RMP is always and ever wrong. It’s likely that many evaluations are more or less accurate. It’s also likely that many are bad. The difficulty is telling which is which.

jim, at 7:30 am EDT on June 5, 2007

RateMyProfessors.com

Student evaluations – whether online or within the university — have a place, but should not be taken too seriously. More effective in evaluating faculty are exit interviews with graduating seniors. These students have had time to learn which professors really taught them something and they have the maturity to put their bad experiences in perspective.

Jane S. Shaw, Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, at 8:50 am EDT on June 5, 2007

To really evaluate what this study tells us about RMP, we’d need to know more what is assessed in Maine’s official course evals and how they’re collected. At my institution, the course evals are collected (but not published) online, and, like RMP, there is little incentive for students to fill them out except strong feelings about the course/instructor. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a correlation between the university’s and RMP’s ratings. So, we’re talking reliability, but not necessarily validity in these ratings. Overall, I think student evaluations should be part of the picture in how professors’ teaching is evaluated, but not the whole picture as is currently the case at many places. And, much more thought should go into creating more valid assessment tools for faculty.

Craig, at 9:10 am EDT on June 5, 2007

How about Rate My Student?

I think the only unfair aspect of Rate My Professor is that its corollary, Rate My Student, does not exist. I’d love to be able to weed out the plagiarizers, whiners, and non-readers.

Julie Reiser, Lecturer at Towson University, at 9:15 am EDT on June 5, 2007

Chili Peppers?

Could you imagine what would happen if professors assigned students “chili peppers” as part of their grades?

Jeremy, at 9:20 am EDT on June 5, 2007

Related articles and comments

It’s very interesting to re-read those comments at:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/02/rmp

Duncan, at 9:25 am EDT on June 5, 2007

research anybody

I am astounded that anyone associated with higher education, much less someone who researchers student evaluations or consults regarding teacher development (like the first respondent), could be so ignorant of the relevant research literature. That literature demonstrates that student evaluations are completely invalid as measures of teaching quality. Research has repeatedly shown that student evaluations (and RMP.com)have a high correlation with professor appearance and easiness of grading, neither of which has any thing to do with instructional quality. One study, published in the APA’s flagship journal (Journal of Personal and Social Psychology), demonstrated that end of semester evaluations have an incredibly high correlation with students evaluation of the same professors after students had seen them for only 30 seconds on video without audio. Please don’t tell me (as one set of idiot web commentators suggested) that students can make valid assessments of a professor’s teaching ability after seeing him/her for only 30 seconds on a video monitor with the volume set at zero. Obviously they are focusing on looks and perhaps some level of behavioral dynamism (see e.g., the research on the “Dr. Fox Effect"). Geez, people, do your homework!

ex-prof, at 9:50 am EDT on June 5, 2007

Rate my student

Rate My Student, does, indeed exist. Believe it or not, every semester, professors are free to award their personal favorites tokens called “grades” and they are free to write letters of recommendation for them. For the really nice and pretty students, professors will make personal pleas (via the telephone or in person) for them. A high grade is unreviewable.

A lower-than-normal-grade is only reviewable if the student shows initiatve and makes a “snink.”

Larry, at 10:45 am EDT on June 5, 2007

Balanced by GPA?

Though not practical, perhaps if a calculation were put in place to multiply the GPA of the student with the professor ranking, there would be a more fair calculation. In effect, it would be like a quality points type of calculation averaged by the number of students as well. This way, professors would not worry as much about assigning lower grades to students who deserve them thereby decreasing the grade inflation trend for ratings that is, frankly, disturbing.

Another thought is that we must also understand the level of maturity from the raters. If three-year olds rated their parents by the food they were given, those parents who gave candy all the time would likely rate high by the childen — and even may get a chili pepper as well. Of course, it would not be good for them. As educational professionals, we must do what is best for the student whether the student agrees or not... we must feed them well.

Eric, at 10:45 am EDT on June 5, 2007

On Trying To Stay Laid Back

I am generally fairly laid back about student evaluation of instruction in the first place and am not inclined to be perturbed by RateMyProfessors.

Do I think there are differences in instructional competence? Yes indeed, but I have yet to see a measurement instrument that does even an adequate job capturing what is important, let alone doing it in a way that is likely to significantly improve instruction in the future.

Do I learn anything from student evaluations? All the time, except that most measurement instruments are designed for speed and convenience, so you get lots of silly numbers and only a very few meaningful or helpful comments.

Is there any reason to take a students’ academic vitriol seriously? You bet. In my opinion, most “pissed off” students reached that point by virtue of something I wish I could have done differently.

Does student evaluation of instruction discourage instructional innovation and professorial “risk-taking?” For sure. I, for example, routinely employ a Socratic instructional style that gets me lower marks on “professor’s preparation for class,” when, in fact, there is no one who is more prepared than I for what is going to happen in the classroom (sometimes students are just sooo niave).

Can we do something about the negative aspects of evaluation? I doubt it. We have been “at this” for a very, very long time ... and there is not much evidence that we are getting better at it. Furthermore, this silliness is the American way ... like the BCS rankings of football teams, the U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges and universities, and American Idol rankings of God knows what (talent?). We’re almost certain this stuff is methodologically and practically absurd, but we just can’t turn our backs on it.

Okay, so what’s the bottom line? It would be a trivial matter to accept fairly harmless, marginally helpful, and slightly entertaining stuff like this (student evaluation of instruction) for what it is ... but if you’re professor U who reports to Chairperson V who reports to Dean W who reports to Vice President for Academic Affairs Y who reports to President Z and if all of those who are alphabetically beyond U are as intellectually challenged as they generally are and can’t ascertain the competence of teacher/scholars without simple-minded decision-making tools ... well, then you’d better abandon your notion of interesting, innovative, or rigorous instructional styles and “teach to the ratings.”

Frizbane Manley, at 11:10 am EDT on June 5, 2007

English

The respondent above who stressed the importance of research is quite right, but unfortunately misses the point, as the horse in question has long since left the barn: there is abundant anecdotal evidence, for example, that comments on RMP.com are used on search committees. There are a whole lot of folks out there, then, who aren’t doing their homework, but who are using impressions of often unjustly disgruntled (or unjustly approving) students to help them make hiring decisions.

The in-house evaluations that students make as a class are often skewed in that, whether they accurately reflect instructor performance or not, do not provide representative samples. At my university (as has become the case elsewhere), rather than give students Scantron sheets to fill out at the end of the semester as we did in the old days, we now try to encourage them to fill out an online grid. This isn’t remotely reliable: this past semester, even after many reminders from me, only five students of 39 registered actually rated me. Were these disgruntled students? Possibly, but it’s hard to know. More to the point, however, whether for good or ill, this is a woefully incomplete sample of my work in the classroom. Unrepresentative samples, while universally acknowledged as discards, can nevertheless sometimes find a way into a personnel file. Numbers like these are also used from semester to semester to help make tenure and promotion decisions at a great many institutions. It’s almost as if the many years of graduate study and intense focus and work toward both a doctorate and employment, not to mention the many adjustments made through the early years to hone one’s teaching, mean somewhat less than a few extra hours at the gym and perhaps the augmentation of one’s wardrobe in order to earn that coveted chili pepper.

As for putting student evals online, then: how much lower would its proponents like to set the bar for deprofessionalization?

Nathan Grant, Associate Professor, at 12:45 pm EDT on June 5, 2007

Rigid curve

Frizbane wrote: “We have been ‘at this’ for a very, very long time ... and there is not much evidence that we are getting better at it.”

Looks as if the standard bell curve holds up quite well in education; rigid actually. Since the time of education in Greece — the kids of the wealthiest, best connected families receive the most “sophisticated” education from the most politically astute Sophists; everyone else receives a sloppy hodge-podge of leftover facts, figures, and personal rants.

(. . . and the kids at the top always pass, unless of course they do something incredibly stupid in public; right Paris?)

The “sophistocates” at the top keep mum on what happens behind the scenes, the bottom 1/5 have long-ago ceased trying, and the middle 3/5s keep muddling along in mud up to our knees (led by the rings in our noses) as long as the evening slop to fill our bellies is reasonably assured.

Dr. F. Gump, at 12:50 pm EDT on June 5, 2007

Here’s the problem. Professors are analyzing what students aren’t really analyzing. I have had profs who have bad remarks on RMP, but I love, and good remarks on RMP, but I hate.

The fact of the matter is that RMP is the biggest way students can talk about their professors. I check RMP every semester now. Do I think it’s the best way? No. I ask my friends who have had these profs if they are good or not. And believe it or not, a lot of people like to get an easy A. That is a result of our culture today.

What it comes down to is that students want to take classes with hot professors. Students want to take classes with professors that make the classes easy. But there are students who want a challenge, and excell in upper-level classes.

And to the person who said something about having a “Rate My Student". It’s the student who is wasting their money by screwing around in class. If they aren’t doing the work, then they don’t deserve an A, or a B, or maybe even a C.

Oh and by the way, most students believe that the in-class evals are terrible. Most people I know just go right down the middle. There’s a few exceptions of professors the class really didn’t like, but most of the time it’s neutral. So if students believe the evals are no good, but are okay with RMP, what does that suggest?

Harry Michelson, at 1:00 pm EDT on June 5, 2007

Paradox of student evaluations

Institutions commonly freight student course and instructor evaluations with more value than the results, positive or neagative, can fairly yield. I suspect that much of the faculty suspicion of student evaluations springs from the inappropriate use of rankings on questions such as “The instructor has a solid grasp of the course material.” It’s unfair at best to expect even a perspicacious undergraduate (and there are lots of them) to rightly judge an instructor’s scholarly bona fides. On the other hand, it is perverse to assume that students have no capacity for knowing good teaching when they see, hear, and feel it, or that faculty motivated to learn something valuable from student feedback are on a fool’s errand. How can we claim to teach critical thinking skills but exempt their application to the instructor’s delivery?

Brian Hopewell, Academic Management Systems, at 2:17 pm EDT on June 5, 2007

I can’t improve on the critiques above — student evaluations of faculty are correlated to expected grade, appearance and factors external to the faculty member so often that only massive amounts of carefully examined data could give them any validity, and we don’t get that — but I do want to emphasize that those numeric student evaluations get taken very, very seriously in tenure evaluations at a lot of institutions, but never seem to be used for anything like post-tenure review.

What’s sauce for the goose....

Jonathan Dresner, at 4:00 pm EDT on June 5, 2007

Student rating

As a grievance officer I have encountered many instances in which the student evaluations ARE THE basis for judging teaching. Somehow, in the words of the mighty POGO, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” We are making ourselves market driven. We care less about what students take from a course than we do about how they preceive our showmanship. Someone’s comment about 9 out of 10 Harvard students being passive learners suggests that the Power Point presenter is going to be the higher scorer on student evaluations. The teacher who deliberetly curtails the information so that students can draw their own conclusions—even if wrong, will be judged more harshly because he/she did not “explain” the concepts well.

As a mathematics teacher a “perfect” lesson would be one in which a problem would be posed, and for the next 20-30 minutes the class went about solving it without any input from me. I once observed a class of 10 year olds when they were working on math problem in groups. I observed one group in which the dominant students was controlling the discussion, but in the wrong direction. I was going to use my best “Socratic” style to move the group in the right direction, but a great teacher, Zoltan Dienes, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t interfere; they will learn more from their mistake.” Sure enough, when the problem was later discussed with the whole class, the group I wanted to help saw where they were wrong, and I suspect learn something about listening to someone who is loud, but maybe not as knowledgable.

Having a student directed course is possible in many college classes. However, if lecturing to a class of 200, Power Point is probably the way to go. If teaching chemistry, an autocratic instructor might in fact keep his students from killing themselves, but in a literature class, it seems reasonable for an instructor not to tell the students what the Mad Hatter meant when discusses Alice’s statement that “Saying what I mean, and meaning what I say, is the same thing.” (Of course I know was Carroll meant when he wrote it, but ... hmmm?) How we teach should reflect the curriculum, the class environment, the class level, and the instructor knowledge, etc. How can all this be reduced to “chilli peppers?”

My favorite evaluation happened once when a student said I didn’t know my “ass from a hole in the ground.” I laughed because that is possibly the one thing I do know for sure. There is about three feet difference between two.

Fred Flener, Retired, at 5:20 pm EDT on June 5, 2007

Post-tenure review and remarks on RMP.com

Re the last remark: on the contrary, here’s someone who did not get promoted because all that counts is student evaluations. Students forced to take a multiple-semester series of courses take their revenge at being required to remember things beyond one test, and being required to do homework in a required course. They state that “required courses should not have homework” and take out the professors who pretend that students should learn anything by libelling them both on in-class evals and RMP.com.

Colleagues say that the only way to get good in-College evals is to stay in the room so students don’t cook up remarks... thus there are some very different results for some on RMP.com and in-house evaluations. There needs to be a better way to evaluate faculty, incuding the fact that they incorporate careful varieties of activities, etc.— in general go beyond the 50% toward students.

LM

LM, at 7:05 pm EDT on June 5, 2007

I just had the worst semester of my teaching career. Students ignored class instruction, didn’t do the reading, and failed to learn many basic lessons that I made sure to re-teach them a minimum of 3 times during the semester.

My evaluations were AWFUL, and tended to indicate the students who complained the most had the worst language skills and attitudes [thus mitigating their comments for me].

What is most relevant...and telling...is the fact that 2 of my lovely charges had actually written bad reviews of me on RMP *BEFORE* the semester had even ended: one wrote a scathing critique [read as “whine"] before midterm and another had written one at the 3/4 mark.

How exactly can a premature evaluation be any sort of indicator other than of inability to do the work? There could be NO reflection. NO evaluation of learning. Nothing worthwhile other than immature bitching.

Shockingly, [as most everyone can] I sort of know who did the RMP ratings. From their grades and class attitude, I was not shocked they needed the outlet to vent their anger that I reprimanded them for bad behavior and awarded them low grades for poor performance.

As other have said, some correlation between the evaluator and their grade would certainly be the BEST way for everyone to know how much credibility to give the complainer.

Underpaid Adjunct, at 9:45 pm EDT on June 5, 2007

No correlation

Comments about my teaching on ratemyprofessor.com are terrible, equal to or worse than the worst comments I have ever received on my university course evaluations. On the university course evaluations, I consistently get almost all good or excellent ratings from my students, so it is clear that the bad comments on ratemyprofessor reflect the views of a very small number of malcontents. Although my university does not make the official evaluations public, I am considering making my own public on my website. But would that serve any useful purpose, other than making ME feel better? I am not so sure.

JR, at 4:35 am EDT on June 6, 2007

The featured authors proclaim that “privacy is a thing of the past...” to justify publicizing ratings of professors via the Web, so let’s sense the potential for that reasoning across a broader spectrum of the campus.

Let us likewise post and assign ratings to each of the following: of (1) samples of every student’s writing, (2) every student’s attendance records and (3) photos of those caught sleeping, reading newspapers or surfing the web during class. Next, let’s post all students’ grades before friends, family, God & country along with any deprecating comments about individuals which any moron on campus may wish to express, under the protection of total anonymity of course. Think how much time employers could save by hitting the “sort” command so that they could pick from only the top 2%!

Next, let’s have a “three strikes and you’re out rule and so we can deny degrees to less popular students and throw ‘em out of the university immediately—save time and money. Take away their degrees in the way these authors would like to see livelihoods of less popular professors taken away.

“Students, don’t worry about what you know or what you can do—just make sure that we like you!” ” Seek to obtain maximum hot chili peppers in your rating.”

Next, if students’ ratings are strongly determined by the first 30 seconds’ experience, why are we spending money for a full employment service so an army of staff can process evaluation forms and keep score? Let’s just fire all the staff, shut down all the form factories and require professors to have a silent 30 second clip from a web cam—this is the age of technology—who needs all this reading comprehension stuff? That is just a thing of the past! With a 30 second cam sample, students can see who’s cool in the classroom and who’s not. Heck—if privacy is a thing of the past, put the camcorders in the professors’ showers and bedrooms—with the first two installations going into the homes of these idiot authors!

Finally, where are the “Rank your regent,” “Pick a provost,” “Choose your chancellor” and “Would you buy a used car from this Dean?” web sites? Why are we excluding these people from all the joys and privileges accorded faculty? Where’s the inclusiveness, sensitivity, and respect for diversity!

Finally, who can we find in the private sector who would put up with...uh...I meant to say “enthusiastically adopt” this personnel model?

When I saw the authors’ recommendation, I really feared summer was not yet here—it was still April Fools’ Day—and it would NOT go away.

Prof Ed, at 8:20 am EDT on June 6, 2007

Rate my Prof

1. “ex-prof” states that research has shown that student evaluations are correlated to easy grades and professor appearance but not teaching quality. That would be my guess. Can anyone provide some leads on where this research is published or summarized?

2. It seems to me that this brings up another question. Given that most universities use student evaluations in determining promotions, wages, etc., despite the fact that there is no reason to think they mean anything, why hasn’t there been a massive class action lawsuit?

3. Is there any research on student evaluations with respect to grade inflation?

Raoul, at 8:55 pm EDT on June 6, 2007

research leads

Raoul, past InsideHigherEd.com stories have discussed the link of student evaluations to grades (and “hotness"): http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/08/rateprof, http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/29/evaluate. Sadly, for all us homely folk, good looks far outweigh ease of grading as a factor leading to high evaluation scores. Along these lines, Hamermesh and Parker’s demonstration of the correlation between attractiveness and evaluation scores can be found in the Economics of Education Review 24 (2005) 369-376. Some of the research I cited (see particularly the Ambady and Rosenthal study) is nicely reviewed in a devastating critique of student evaluations at the following site: http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/sef.htm.

The interested might also consider looking at the series of articles published in The American Psychologist, November 1997 (Vol. 52, Issue 11) and November 1998 (Vol. 53, Issue 11). By the way, to those who claim that all extraneous factors can be factored out, please note that things like appearance, behavioral dynamism and ease of grading explain so much of the variance in student evaluations that there is terribly little variance left, and certainly not enough to provide a finding with much if any statistical power when considering the N one would be able to collect from a single professor’s class.

ex-prof, at 10:40 am EDT on June 7, 2007

Do evaluations even matter?

In my graduate program, there was a professor who I believed to give racial preference to students of color. This was prevelant in all of his classes and some doctoral students were actually bringing suit against him. However, despite several negative evaluations on his inconsistent grading, poor teaching methods, and unfair evaluations, he still continued on as a professor. While I rarely used rate my professor because I had little choice in professors and talked to my peers, it could be helpful for undergrads to know why students liked or didn’t like a professor. I tend to dislike easy classes because they’re a wast of my time vs. a class where I know I’ll work, but I’ll come out of it having learned something.

Kelly, student affairs professional, at 11:00 am EDT on June 7, 2007

Whats the product or service purchased?

I think students have lost the concept of the service/or product they purchased when they paid their tuition at their institution of higher education.. It was to get an “Education"—- the product.. The—- by-product— was the “grade they earned in the class” Knowing little to nothing, but having a great “GPA” is why we (as a county) are out-sourcing jobs, and will continue to do so in the future.. A 2nd rate educational system leads to a, 2nd rate power and economy

terry, at 5:35 am EDT on June 23, 2007