NY Times, September 1, 1999 To Professors' Dismay, Ratings by Students Go Online By IAN ZACK John Moriarty, a 21-year-old business major at the University of Texas, was eager to enroll in a marketing course whose "syllabus sounded really intriguing." But first, like many collegians, he sat down at his computer, logged on to the Internet and availed himself of a new online resource: course evaluations written anonymously by other students. The critiques, in the style of brief movie reviews, said the professor in question was distant, his research outdated and his lectures uninspiring. And if the mini-commentaries were not blunt enough, the numerical ratings were, hovering around 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. "I thought, 'Oh, boy, that's probably not a good course to take,' " Moriarity recalled. And so it goes at colleges across the country. As students sign up for fall classes, they are turning the tables on the teachers who have long held sway over their grade point averages and job prospects. Emboldened by the communal power and the democratic ethos of cyberspace, they are heading to Web sites where they can lambaste professors they deem poor, sing the praises of those they like and scout out courses before adding them to their schedules. . . http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/09/biztech/articles/01eval.html Go to http://www.collegestudent.com/national/rateclasses/ for student ratings of courses Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
