Before I read Paul Trout's and George Cheney's pieces in the Fall 1997 issue of The Montana Professor, on the uses made of teaching evaluations, I drafted the enclosed comment. If you can use it I would be happy to see it in print in The Montana Professor.
Why is it that those universities that deplore the use of the "market" analogy in most of their practices apply it unequivocally in their evaluations of a professor's teaching abilities? Having recently served once more on a rank and tenure committee, I was struck by what a powerful tool the students' evaluations of a professor's abilities continues to be. I would guess there is a strong relationship between how tuition dependent a university is and how important the students' evaluations are. In such universities, solely the university's customers, i.e., its students, evaluate the faculty member's performance. If the customers express dissatisfaction, the professor is not likely to be granted tenure. Never mind that the students may find the ideas the professor is espousing too hard; or the grades received too low. If the course was not what they wanted it to be, the professor receives a failing grade. And, it is the students' grading of the professor that may determine his or her failure at the university because it is also those universities that are tuition driven, that make teaching evaluations a very, or the most , important criterion for tenure. It is also those universities that most often decry the market analogy as being "too harsh," "too impersonal," "too calculating" and take pride in their more sensitive and compassionate treatment of social problems and social and economic inequalities that make their evaluations of the professor as teacher so dependent on the market in the form of consumer (read students) preferences. Now I am not advocating doing away with student evaluations. I am strongly urging that additional measures of the professor as teacher be included as important criteria. Reading and listening to what the professor talks about in class, examining her reading criteria. Reading and listening to what the professor talks about in class, examining her reading and writing assignments, his design of new courses, and even the subject matter that he or she teaches are other possible criteria. For example, in some interdisciplinary departments such as criminal justice, communications and international affairs, the professor who teaches quantitative methods or economic theory, who provides data and emphasizes reliability and validity , may not arouse the students' enthusiasm and support as much as the professor who describes vignettes, and takes a moralistic right versus wrong approach. Who would you rather listen to? I am not saying students are purposely unfair or mean spirited in their evaluations. I am saying universities are giving them too much power. They lack the wisdom and the experience to use their power wisely. In the matter of teaching evaluations, the "customer may not always be right." The institution should make the proper adjustments and perhaps apply the market analogy along with other criteria.
Rita J. Simon, University Professor
American University