In the world of academia, where the pursuit of knowledge and excellence in teaching are paramount, one might assume that evaluation methods would be impartial and objective. However, a thought-provoking article by David Delgado Shorter, a UCLA Professor of World Arts and Cultures, sheds light on the problematic nature of student evaluations. In his article titled “Teaching Evaluations Are Racist, Sexist, And Often Useless: It’s Time To Put These Flawed Measures In Their Place,” Shorter questions the validity and fairness of using student evaluations as a basis for academic merit and promotion decisions.
Shorter’s journey into this subject began when he reviewed his own teaching evaluations from the previous years, aiming to compile them for promotion purposes. What he found was a mixture of bizarre comments and personal narratives that had little to do with the actual course content.
He realized that this was not an isolated incident; many of his Black and Asian colleagues, especially women, faced even more problematic evaluations.
These concerns prompted Shorter to delve into the research surrounding teaching evaluations. He discovered a wealth of peer-reviewed papers spanning decades, all pointing to the same disturbing trend: gender and racial biases in student evaluations. Women consistently received lower ratings than men, and younger women were often judged less professionally than their older counterparts. Women of color faced additional challenges, being rated as less effective than white women. These biases, based on gender, race, and even seemingly unrelated factors like the time of day a course was taught, raised serious questions about the validity of using student evaluations as a sole measure of teaching effectiveness.
The American Sociological Association (ASA) recognized these issues and recommended in 2019 that student evaluations should not be used as the sole basis for merit and promotion decisions unless part of a broader, more holistic assessment. Some universities, such as the University of Southern California, the University of Oregon, and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, have already taken steps to combine student evaluations with other forms of assessment in personnel decisions. The ASA’s stance has garnered support from nearly two dozen professional organizations.
The legal implications of relying solely on student evaluations are also a cause for concern. In a case at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) in 2009, an arbitrator, William Kaplan, acknowledged “serious and inherent limitations” of student evaluations, describing them as “imperfect at best and downright biased and unreliable at worst.” This raises the possibility of legal challenges if colleges continue to use these evaluations as the primary criterion for decision-making.
In response to these issues, Shorter’s own department at UCLA decided to prioritize fairness and reliability. They chose not to rely on student evaluations for job security and instead implemented a system that allowed faculty members to use peer-assessment and self-evaluation, with documented revisions to pedagogical statements. This approach aligns with the principle that academics should be assessed by their peers and experts in their respective fields rather than relying solely on student evaluations.