Hacker News Reader

Comment by tdumitrescu | Hacker News Reader

I love this analogy: "Glassdoor upended workplace power dynamics in the same way that Ratemyprofessors.com altered the power dynamics of college lecture halls, where, suddenly, professors had to worry about whether their students found them to be “inspirational” or “hot.”"

As a former professor I have always found that site unbelievably odious. Did higher education improve when students (as paying "customers" of the university) got the upper hand in areas like grading practices and curriculum-setting? Does anyone think college education is in a better place today than 20 years ago, except the bizdev and admin staff? Surely Glassdoor could work the same wonders for workplaces...

View on HN

I don't think colleges are a better place of learning with ratemyprofessor, but the college's chose to turn into businesses on their own.

Students getting some power over people they pay aren't what caused colleges to start hiring more adjunct professors for cheap rather than lifelong ones. It also didn't make colleges spend massive amounts of money on marketing or redoing all the landscaping every two months so that parents of prospective students would be more enticed to send their kids to that school

You have the flip side. My partner, finishing her Accounting degree, looked up her "Worst" professor, who was openly saying she had no interest in teaching and was just doing so as she wrote a textbook. And also had a very poor command of the English language in general.

She found that professor had no less than four profiles in RMP. Every time she accumulated sufficient negative reviews she changed her name slightly and created a new profile.

I agree with the concerns about professor rating. Students are in a weird position where they are a “customer” in a sense but their incentives are not aligned with the university for grading. They may ensure up paying $20k to have a professor give them a (justified) failing grade.

For employees, it’s a bit better. It is reasonable to look for a good work environment, and employers won’t always be upfront in an interview setting. Having the inside scoop helps the potential employee.

Separating teaching and grading might fix this.

Is this realistic?

Sure, my understanding is that's how Oxford works.

Standardized testing is effectively that.

Take it for what it's worth but I know the teachers who taught me most had great reviews on ratemyteacher.

And it doesn't really help because you know which professors are bad and you might just have to take a class from them anyway.

We did have a really bad professor in my department who got me fired for something stupid. (I was a lab admin). A bunch of students came to defend me. Her husband was the chairman so all of her evaluations went through a different department/chairman.

She got enough complains they didn't grant her tenure! Her and her husband left the university shortly after. I feel like the students achieved something really positive there.

Our college had its own internal system for students rating professors. In order to receive your final grade for a class, you had to complete a review of the course and professor, with optional public components. During the shopping period of next term, you could read all the reviews from previous terms, by professor and/or class.

I think the admins like the data it gives them on professors, let’s them know who to promote / watch, etc

As a student, ratemyprofessor was the best resource for selecting courses available to me.

There are some really bad professor that don't care much about lecturing because they have tenure.

I had no choice with the courses of my major because they were required, but when it came to electives, it was amazing. It really made the difference.

There are plenty of bad professors out there.

college education may be in a better place today than it otherwise would have been without RMP, also many professors have academic tenure so that may need to change before university departments can really be responsive to students

Reply on news.ycombinator.com