Page 116 - Crisis in Higher Education

88 • Crisis in Higher Education

of faculty. For many years, universities have asked students to evaluate the
classroom performance of faculty. Although these evaluation instruments
can provide useful feedback so faculty can improve, they have a number of
flaws. They ask students to assess the value of what they have learned. For
most students, especially those who are early in their studies, they have
a very limited basis on which to judge the relevance of topics in a course.
Most students do not have enough life experience or a good understanding
of what they need to know to be successful. Students can assess whether
the faculty member was on time, spoke clearly, was organized, and treated
them with respect. The instrument, which likely has a dozen or two dozen
questions, is often boiled down to a single question that goes something
like this: How would you (the student) rate the faculty member on teach-
ing effectiveness? This question is often used to assess a faculty member’s
teaching performance in annual merit evaluations, promotion and tenure
deliberations, and contract extension decisions. Also, the instrument is
likely to have an open comment section, so students can share specific
insights. Among the most common comments are “This course required
too much work” or “This course is too difficult.” These comments from
students are often triggered by a desire to keep their workload low.
Evaluations have biases. Students who give instructors low ratings are
more likely to perform poorly and claim courses are too difficult. In addi-
tion, student evaluations are affected by the type of course and its place-
ment in a degree program. Students in PhD programs tend to give faculty
very high ratings. Students in master’s programs give ratings that are high,
but not as high as PhD courses. Graduate students are more mature and
often have work experience so they have a better understanding of how to
apply the concepts and techniques they are learning. At the undergradu-
ate level, courses that are required but outside the field of study, especially
courses in the first two years of school and courses with a quantitative
bent, tend to have very low evaluations. These evaluations are much lower
than those for junior- and senior-level courses that are within the stu-
dents’ major field of study.
One buffer against the bias in student evaluation is tenure. This is not
meant to imply that tenure should shield faculty who are poor teachers.
A case can be made to fire tenured faculty for any number of reasons,
including poor teaching. Tenure does provide protection for faculty who
demand more from students by covering more topics and demanding
a higher level of performance. Faculty members who do this are trying
to give students more knowledge for each tuition dollar, making higher