If I understood the Dean's position correctly, it was that they didn't want students making course choices based on a single one-dimensional metric, but would r

If I understood the Dean's position correctly, it was that they didn't want students making course choices based on a single one-dimensional metric, but would rather the students saw the bigger picture before deciding. I can understand this viewpoint; some very good courses have a bi-modal distribution of ratings - students either love or hate them. The trick is to figure out which you'll likely be. You can't see this from the mean. Where I teach (not at Yale), we've been having difficulty getting the administration to publish teaching metrics at all. This sort of public argument doesn't help matters. I wouldn't be surprised if Yale simply stops publishing the metrics at all if they perceive they're being widely abused.