'I love this old man! He is hilarious!!' a UW-Madison student writes of a sociology professor on RateMyProfessors.com.
'A bit overweight. His assignment instructions are awful, and apparently he hasn't heard of proofreading,' writes another of an engineering professor.
In response to the rising popularity of commercial professor evaluation websites like RateMyProfessors.com, some universities are listing their school-sanctioned professor ratings online for viewing, along with student comments. While Northwestern University and Williams College are making professor ratings and comments available online, UW-Madison has no uniform system to do so.
The Associated Students of Madison currently have a course evaluation system, but it does not allow posting of student-generated comments, leaving students hungry for more information.
RateMyProfessors.com allows students to post ratings and comments for any teacher, including teaching assistants.
Evaluations are public records, and students may request to see professors' evaluations and student comments on a case-by-case basis, but UW-Madison administration does not supply ASM with the comments, ASM Academic Affairs Chair Stephanie Biese said.
Furthermore, ASM has not updated its online course evaluations since spring 2004, which Biese attributed to rapid turnover in the organization. The 2004-'05 Academic Affairs chair decided not to post the evaluations, Biese explained, but this year Biese will reinitiate the system.
'We do want to work with them and hopefully re-establish that relationship,' UW-Madison Communications Director John Lucas said of the setback.
An ASM employee is currently working on posting past semesters' evaluations, Biese said.
However, ASM does not have intentions to obtain student comments to accompany evaluations online in the future, Biese said.
In fact, Biese added ASM hopes to ask the administration to take on course evaluations 'so ASM doesn't have to anymore.'
'Well, it's technically feasible,' Sapiro said of the Provost's Office taking on the evaluations. 'The question is whether it's a good idea.'
UW-Madison Interim Provost Virginia Sapiro said a course might be taught by a different professor each semester, which makes an evaluation of that course misleading.
'Reading the course evaluation from Professor A doesn't tell you a thing about what it'll be like with Professor B,' said Sapiro of the ASM course evaluations.
Sapiro added anonymity on school-sanctioned evaluations exempts students from responsibility for their remarks.
Without that accountability, discrimination of all types creeps in, Sapiro explained.
'An awful lot of us have received comments where people make incredibly racist, sexist comments,' Sapiro said. 'In some cases, those factors are affecting the evaluations.'
Also, the project may not be practical, as the evaluations are currently not standardized between departments, a time-consuming obstacle to overcome, according to Lucas.
Assistant Director of Testing and Evaluation Services Char Tortorice said she agreed.
All evaluations are department-specific and scales differ'on some evaluations, a score of '1' means 'best,' while '5' means 'worst,' Tortorice explained.
'One year the students reversed them, and it came out that all their best professors were horrible,' she said. 'It hurt them terribly, in terms of getting merit raises and things like that.'
