Student evaluations flawed

MORE TROUBLING FINDINGS regarding “student evaluations” are revealed in this morning’s Inside Higher Ed. In “New Questions on Student Evaluations,” IHE describes a new study by economists at Ohio State University:

Previous studies have found that students are more likely to give good reviews to instructors who are easy graders or who are good looking. The Ohio State study — in many ways larger and more ambitious than previous ones — found a strong correlation between grades in a course and reviews of professors, such that it is clear that students are rewarding those who reward them.

That finding alone, however, may not negate the value of student evaluations. One explanation could be that good students are earning good grades, and crediting their good professors for their learning. The Ohio State study, however, provides evidence for the more cynical/realistic interpretation — namely that professors who are easy (and aren’t necessarily the best teachers) earn good ratings. The way the Ohio State team did this was to look at grades in subsequent classes that would have relied on the learning in the class in which the students’ evaluations were studied. Their finding: no correlation between professor evaluations and the learning that is actually taking place.

In another finding of concern, the study found evidence that students — controlling for other factors — tend to give lesser evaluations to instructors who are women or who were born outside the United States. And they found this despite not finding any correlation between instructor identity and the level of learning that took place.

While there may be ways to improve the reliability of student evaluations, the authors write, “we believe that any student evaluations are best used in conjunction with peer reviews of teaching.”….