Biters bit

by Henry Farrell on January 12, 2006

Via one of my colleagues, the answer for academics annoyed by RateMyProfessor

“http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/”:http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/

{ 1 trackback }

Pharyngula
01.13.06 at 10:15 am

{ 6 comments }

1

Kenny Easwaran 01.12.06 at 8:40 pm

It looks like students are having a bit of fun with this too. Here’s the ratings for Alexius Meinong at Rutgers:

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=216411

2

willie mink 01.13.06 at 1:20 pm

pharyngula: that wasn’t my experience. As someone who wrote to Rate Your Students points out, the postings at Rate My Professors, while peppered with bad ones, do generally represent what the students think of me. I get great evaluations at the end of the semester that match those at Rate My Professors.

I did have a lot of fun though reading through the archives at Rate Your Students. It’s just a chance to vent, and some whose writings appear there are delightfully inspired by that chance. I recommend going to the first post and reading upwards from the bottom of each month, rather than chronologically backwards.

3

J-Dog 01.13.06 at 2:31 pm

For a chuckle, check out Dembski’s review on ratemyprofessors.com!

4

josh 01.14.06 at 12:54 am

Funny — but also sometimes distastefully rancourous (and also somewhat worrying for someone who’s looking forward to a career of university teaching). I (perhaps naively) always assumed that professors were supposed to be more mature than their students (though I suppose I should be cured of that misapprehension by now).
Complaining about students is a popular past-time among grad students, though we tend not to do it online. Also, grad students tend to complain about everything; that seems to be one of the great joys of our existence.

5

Oskar Shapley 01.14.06 at 8:54 am

The internet makes lying easy and anonymous. There is also the general rule that people complain ca. 4 times more often than they praise.

Rate My Professors is no more representative than an internet poll. Wait, IT IS an internet poll. It’s no better tool for choosing professors than the writings in the campus toilet.

Anyone who chooses his professors on the basis of “easiness” and “hotness” deserves the education that he will get.

So my point is that thanks to RMP we, the non-hot and demanding teachers, will hopefully get only those students who understand what good education means and who want to work hard.

This self-selection process in the end works to our advantage and to the disadvantage of the students. Those who want easiness are also those who should have taken the work-intensive courses. RTM gives them the best tool they can get to sabotage their education.

6

Eric Duncan 01.15.06 at 3:25 pm

Rate Your Students (http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com) does a lot of stuff besides merely giving faculty a chance to vent. There have been a number of recent posts about ways in which faculty and students can come to terms with the sometimes dicey relationship. Good reading.

Comments on this entry are closed.