You’re sitting in on a lecture. 

It’s close to the end of the semester, but the writing is on the wall: You will not be getting a good grade on this final.

“Maybe I can get by with an 80. I’ll probably get a C though, and if it’s really bad, maybe I’ll dip down into the low 60s.”

You internally sigh as the professor continues to squint at the size 80 font on the slides. He’s reading with an exhausting drone that sounds like the personification of paint drying, and you start to wonder how rude it would be to just stand up right now and never come back into that lecture hall.

Thankfully — later in the semester — you make a glorious academic comeback with your latest exam score: a 78. As you tell your friends to avoid taking that ancient professor at all costs, you ask yourself, how many more innocent freshmen will fall into his clutches in the years to come?

Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I imagine the average college student’s life pre-“Rate My Professors” — and I’m only half joking.

Despite what an academic advisor or whoever else might say, I think it’s obvious to anyone with any sense that “Rate My Professors” is an incredibly useful platform. 

Yes, it’s true that it doesn’t capture all of the facets of every course — and lazy students will naturally underrate rigorous professors — but it does a good job of giving a general sense of what a class will be like. At the very least, it gives you an idea of what other students have thought of a professor in the past, and that alone can be helpful.

However, it’s time to make some updates. “Rate My Professors” serves its purpose, but there are a few things that could be done to take it to the next level.

Allow full professor profiles with syllabus postings and class expectations

One complaint often raised by those who dislike “Rate My Professors” — usually the professors themselves — is that the platform contains an inherent tendency to cause a professor to be viewed more negatively than they would otherwise be viewed if every member of their class had to leave them a review on the platform.

Specifically, they argue that a student is far more likely to leave a review if they did poorly in a course, irrespective of how the given course was structured or the degree of fault in the student’s performance. For this reason, they assert that the reviews on a professor’s profile can easily misrepresent the views the majority of a class might hold on that professor.

This is a reasonable objection. But there’s a problem: We can’t just silence the students who complain. So what should we do?

I say let the professors make their case.

Sure, professors can already reply to reviews on the site, which is a start. But let’s expand that functionality.

Let professors upload the previous semester’s syllabi on the platform to set student expectations. Give them an option to introduce themselves and talk about the way they like to run their classes. Maybe even add a feature where professors can create listings for individual courses to set future class expectations and attract new students.

Will all professors use this feature? No. But including it would make sorting the good reviews from the bad much easier when professors do engage with their online reputations more directly.

Add an “average rating given” indicator next to student reviews

Following the vein of the previous problem, we still need a way to indicate the reliability of individual student reviews — even when professors aren’t posting syllabi or course expectations under my new feature. 

However, there’s a countervailing problem that arises here: The reviews on “Rate My Professors” are anonymous, and it’s critical that they remain that way.

For that reason, it’s probably not a good idea to have post histories. Instead, a similar  — although effective — alternative could be implemented: Average rating given indicators.

Since “Rate My Professors” has proprietary access to users’ post histories, the platform could aggregate user reviews and post an indicator next to each review that shows the mean average of ratings given by that student to all professors.

Want to just post reviews to rag on professors? Other people can see that and know that you aren’t the most reputable source. It’s a simple thing to add, but it would give additional credibility to user reviews — a critical step in portraying course expectations more accurately.

Let students display their major next to their reviews

I’m sure you’ve read a horrible review on “Rate My Professors” after completing a course, only to wildly disagree with the reviewer’s opinion of the professor teaching the class. For example, maybe you’re an engineering major who read a doomsday-sounding review on Calculus 1, only to breeze through the class with ease.

“Heh,” you scoff. “Only a liberal arts major could have written this. No wonder they’re not getting jobs.”

If I was an engineering major, I would probably say that. But I fear I’m too romantically successful to be admitted to any engineering program.

Anyway, the point is this: You probably want to know what sort of academic background a reviewer has to understand the perspective they’re coming from.

Allowing students to display their majors would give readers additional insight into reviews; instead of guessing whether a reviewer was well-equipped to take a class, you could get a better sense of the reviewer’s academic preparation for that course.

These aren’t groundbreaking changes, but honestly, “Rate My Professors” doesn’t need an overhaul. Although it would be nice to see these features implemented, I’m grateful for what we have. 

Sure, maybe I can’t see the absolute specifics of a class, but I’m not stuck watching a borderline-hypnotized professor read slides for an hour.

And for that, I have “Rate My Professors” to thank.

Kaleb Blizzard is a philosophy sophomore and opinion writer for The Battalion.