Maggie's Farm

As a former aspiring faculty member in the humanities (I got a PhD, and aside from teaching in grad. school, had a visiting appointment for several semesters at a small college in the midwest), I left the field more than a decade ago for several different reasons: 1). I didn't care too much about producing the kind of theory and jargon-laden publications that the academy values, 2). I didn't like the increasing emphasis on student evaluations as a key component of evaluations, and 3). I didn't see why I should have to put up with all the academic politics when I was certainly capable of using my abilities to do other things that could be more lucrative, more worthwhile, or more meaningful.

With regard to the question of student evaluations, I eventually learned how to play that game pretty well, but I felt like I did so at the expense of rigor. At the small college where I taught, for instance, during my first term teaching there, I took my colleagues seriously when they talked about what high standards they had and what tough graders they were. So I held up high standards, too, and it turned out that my students hated me for it, and they made that clear on their evaluations. So the next semester, I eased up a bit on the standards, and the evaluations were so positive that my department chair said he wished he got evaluations like those. (Never fear, though, I was still the toughest grader in my department.)

Although this might seem simply anecdotal, I've seen it happen too many times to believe it is a coincidence. I've had colleagues who noted the same thing with regard to lowering standards and seeing their evaluations soar. And twenty years ago, I was working in the provost's office at an elite university during a tough tenure fight. Many students were up in arms when a popular professor with only a few mediocre publications was denied tenure. At one point, the tenure review committee requested to see the grade distribution for his courses, and almost all of his students received As and Bs. Needless to say, it was no coincidence why he was so popular.

I think it's a common misconception that students are the only ones who know when a faculty member isn't a competent teacher. Although I no longer teach, I still work at a university, and believe me, other faculty members have a very good idea who is or isn't performing effectively in the classroom. A few years ago, I served on a committee with a number of faculty members, and out of curiosity one day, looked up comments about some of them at an online faculty rating site. The students' perceptions of some of those folks mapped pretty well against my perceptions and the perceptions of other people on the committee. It was evident that Dr. So and So was a bumbling fool from his work (or lack thereof) on the committee, and that's what students said about him, also. Another professor's students complained about his huge ego and his impatience. And a third professor's students said she was very intense, but also a committed and effective teacher. There were a few positive surprises (the quiet and self-effacing fellow who turned out to be a well-loved teacher), but not very many negative ones (it was pretty easy to predict who wasn't great at the job).