5 ms·
At the end of the semester, students who enjoyed the course should just tip their professors. Adding a real free-market incentive would increase class size and
by pfooti 12y ago
At the end of the semester, students who enjoyed the course should just tip their professors. Adding a real free-market incentive would increase class size and teaching quality, right? Let's let the invisible hand of the market decide; it is certainly more motivating than course evaluations.
I have taught at two higher-ed institutions. In one, each student was given a 20-question evaluation. Of those twenty questions, two were of any importance to the instructor: overall instructor and overall course. The other eighteen were frequently ignored by administration and had absolutely zero influence on tenure, promotion, raises or retention. Those two examined scores were averaged over all course over the entire year, but not weighted - you'd have a six-person course count as much toward your final average as a sixty-person course. The scores were from 1 (bad) to 5 (good). You needed an overall average of 3 on each scale to avoid being fired. Higher scores yielded no tangible (or intangible) rewards. Every faculty member taught enough grad-level courses (PhD in particular tend to yield all 5s) that nobody ever really worried about their evaluations from an enforcement perspective. Those of us who cared about actually improving our practice had better ways to get honest reflections from their students. Personally, I tended to get low-ish evaluations from students expecting an easy A ("Professor __ expects his students to work really hard and learn" "He thinks he's the King of Science" etc etc), and high evaluations from students who wanted to learn the stuff the course was about.
Of course, I also got better over time and so did my course evaluations. I also got better at gaming the system. Add too much reading to the syllabus, and remove an assignment or two so you can be "responsive to student needs", for example.
At the other institution, course evaluations were ignored entirely. They played no role whatsoever in anything. On the other hand, I had a better time teaching those students, and according to my evaluations that had no impact on my career, I was doing a better job of it to boot.
Of course, anecdotes vs data, etc etc. Still, I think tips are the way to go. We already know mean course evaluations can be predicted by the grades students expect to get [1], so let's just flip that around a little.
[1]: https://stat.duke.edu/~dalene/chance/chanceweb/153.johnson.pdf https://stat.duke.edu/~dalene/chance/chanceweb/153.johnson.p...
- naner 12y agoAt the end of the semester, students who enjoyed the course should just tip their professors. Adding a real free-market incentive would increase class size and teaching quality, right? Let's let the invisible hand of the market decide First of all, broke college students certainly aren't going to 'tip' their professors. I guess perhaps you're thinking part of tuition will be used for this? Still, what students 'enjoy' is not necessarily what is most beneficial for them in a college course. I think you're setting up the incentives wrong.
- userbinator 12y agoStill, what students 'enjoy' is not necessarily what is most beneficial for them in a college course. I think you're setting up the incentives wrong. Exactly. The majority of them just want the highest grades with the least effort, and the professors who will quite naturally want to get tipped more, will optimise toward that. It'll create a situation where teaching next-to-nothing and giving everyone perfect scores gets the highest rewards; i.e. not much of an education.
- WalterBright 12y agoThat may be true for some, but not for me. Not only was I paying most of the tuition bill, I selected classes based on what I though was knowledge I needed for the career I wanted. An "easy A" didn't figure into it. I wasn't interested in paying lots of money for nothing. I also wasn't interested in attending a university known for easy grading.
- watwut 12y agoQuoting article: "There's an intriguing exception to the pattern: Classes full of highly skilled students do give highly skilled teachers high marks. Perhaps the smartest kids do see the benefit of being pushed." Maybe you are in that "highly skilled" group. Unfortunately, average student have different behavior.
- WalterBright 12y agoI don't know if that necessary corresponds to being highly skilled or not. But I like being pushed hard in a class - it brings out the best in me. Easy A's just engender boredom and contempt. I remember once being pushed to enter an athletic competition where the field was not so good. "It'll be an easy win for you" I was told. That made me completely uninterested. I entered one where I was told "You'll be in way over your head." and I was. I came in last - but there was never a more satisfying one to me, because it was my best job ever, and just being on the field with those other excellent competitors was exciting. An analogy would be just qualifying for the Olympic team, even if you have no hope of getting a gold.