Teacher knows best?
Should the preferences of students be used to evaluate professors?
In Monday’s New York Times Stanley Fish wrote on Texas A&M’s plan to make the university like a “businesses” in which the professors are held more accountable to student evaluations. The problem, according to Fish, is that students are not in the proper position to make a fair “judgment of value” about their educational needs and the quality of a professor.
Students tend to like everything neatly laid out; they want to know exactly where they are; they don’t welcome the introduction of multiple perspectives, especially when no master perspective reconciles them; they want the answers.
In contrast, Fish comments that the best teaching often involves withholding the gratification of simple answers, even if students only come to appreciate the wisdom of this approach many years down the road.
Fish is right to worry about placing too much emphasis on student evaluations. Schools aren’t simply a business in which the customers, or, in this case, the students, “are always right.” College and universities should challenge the assumptions of their students, forcing them to take sometimes-uncomfortable intellectual risks. Consequently, there is an obvious danger in creating a system in which colleges and professors are forced to conform their teaching to the “preferences” of the student body. Similarly, I’m skeptical of the recent trend of schools allowing students more freedom in choosing their schedules by reducing distribution requirements.
At the same time, there is a danger in being too dismissive of the “value judgments” of students. Professor Fish certainly has some credibility when it comes to discussing how students think, but it is still notable how quick he is to make generalizations about their preferences and motivations. Do students dislike professors who refuse to provide “easy” answers, maybe, but I wish he provided a little more support before making such a definitive claim.
At Carleton College, where I am a student, students rate their classes at the end of each term and are also invited to evaluate the presentations of professor candidates. Would I want these evaluations to be the primary means of rating professors, no, but that does not mean they are worthless. I’ve found my peers generally appreciate challenging professors who force them to step outside their comfort zone.
Further, students are in a position to provide unique insights about their learning styles. Students may lack the foresight to always know what is in their best interest, but this does not mean that staff and faculty possess some omniscient power to know exactly how students best absorb material. Student evaluations have some serious drawbacks but it seems extreme to write them off as a “terrible idea.”
-Luke
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- What is the educational value of intercollegiate sports?
- Are too many students going to college?
- Fish on the First, Continued
- A classic education for the rest of us
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