Books How Teacher Evaluations Broke the University by Rose Horowitch

"How Teacher Evaluations Broke the University" by Rose Horowitch is an article that critically examines the unintended consequences of student evaluations of teaching (SETs) in higher education. Originally designed to provide feedback to help improve teaching quality, these evaluations have contributed to a problematic culture in universities, particularly in the US.

Key points include:

Students are often poor judges of actual teaching effectiveness because rigorous learning can feel difficult and unpleasant, leading them to favor easier courses and instructors who are less challenging.

Research shows little to no positive correlation—and sometimes negative correlation—between student evaluations and objective measures of student learning and performance.

Student evaluations display biases, including gender bias, attractiveness bias, and grade expectation bias, undermining their reliability.

Faculty feel pressure to inflate grades and lower academic standards to secure positive evaluations, contributing to widespread grade inflation.

The push for high evaluations has caused some professors to prioritize student satisfaction over academic rigor, inadvertently weakening educational standards.

The pandmic exacerbated these trends, with grade inflation increasing and professors lowering expectations to support stressed students.

Some universities now seek to complement or replace student evaluations with peer reviews and other measures to better assess teaching quality.