Walking around campus before syllabus week, you often hear the same whispered advice traded like black market goods: “Check Rate My Professors before registering,” or “Her class is an easy A, there’s almost no homework.” And of course, the frequent, “Don’t take that professor, his class is too hard.” These cautionary tales are otherwise known as the holy grail of scheduling.
But let’s be honest, Rate My Professors is more of a popularity poll than a teaching evaluation tool.
The rating stars don’t let you know if the professor has mastered the art of lecturing or cracked the code on information retention. Instead, students will advise you on whether you’ll be needing to cry in Evans Library because of the excessive homework assignments, or if you’ll be served a platter of extra credit.
Although seemingly effective advice, the result of this warped system penalizes intelligent, yet stricter, professors while glorifying ones who may be more lenient with grading. Rate My Professors users seem to frequently confuse the words “effective” with “easy” and “competent” with “popular.”
This is not to say that the 12th Man’s voice is irrelevant or that the student body shouldn’t have any say in the matter — quite the opposite, actually. After all, we Aggies are the ones sitting through long lectures, grasping for notes from a monotone voice while pulling all-nighters fueled with a concerning amount of caffeine. The entire framework of courses begins to shift when student feedback becomes the only significant feedback.
While stressful in the moment, the tough-but-fair classes within your degree plan will be the most useful for building success in your post-grad future. You will walk out of those end-of-year finals with the knowledge cemented in your mind, and the reason is not because the course was easy, but because you had to wrestle with the material.
However, that’s not the case for those genius professors who are buried under one-star rants stating, “This class has too much reading” or “The professor doesn’t curve.” The professors who actually challenge us are typically the ones we have gratitude toward when looking back at our college career.
The solution to this dilemma? It’s not to disregard students’ judgements, but to blend in professional evaluations from above departments along with random drop-ins by deans and administrators. In turn, this will promote a classroom culture that prioritizes learning over forbearance and merciful curves on exams.
Imagine the kind of pressure a professor might feel from an audit from one of their superiors or department heads. Suddenly, that half-hearted PowerPoint from 2011 doesn’t cut it, and consistency matters — exactly how it should have been from the start. Keeping lecturers on their toes will increase punctuality, preparation and may even save you from the dreaded monotone lecture.
Would it terrify professors? Maybe a little, but so does any type of accountability. It’s time to turn the tables from the world of pop quizzes and surprise assignments and balance the pressure onto a professor’s level of preparation.
While Texas A&M does provide end-of-year student evaluations through HelioCampus, the mid-term evaluations and annual reports are censored on Interfolio due to the personal information included. Clearly, it’s not students’ fault that Rate My Professors appears most helpful when looking for guidance on class selection; it’s our only option.
Through A&M sharing more accessible reports between both faculty’s professional knowledge and first-hand student experiences, professors will benefit from this counterbalanced feedback.
Rather than having a tarnished reputation because of an angry student slandering them online over a bad grade, professors can get accurate credit for their depth of knowledge or teaching styles. In doing so, the system rewards brainiacs who refuse to dumb things down at the mercy of those five stars on Rate My Professors. This would tell the students, “This instructor is hard, but they’re hard for a reason.”
The productivity payoff from this arrangement would be extensive because higher-ranking faculty would be holding everyone accountable. No more waiting 15 minutes after class starts for your professor to begin the lesson, or office hours mysteriously evaporating after midterms. No longer is it the professor’s responsibility to cater to the students by throwing out extensions for the more vocally disgruntled students.
Mixing differing opinions creates a fairer structure when it comes to registering for classes — one that values consistency, rigor and true learning. In the end, classroom culture thrives through collaboration, so let’s expand that scope beyond star ratings and online gripes. At A&M, we deserve an authentic administration that is willing to help students decide on one of the most important decisions before every semester.
Aliyah Mims is a finance junior and opinion writer for The Battalion.
