Louis Proyect wrote: > 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 question was distant, his research outdated and his lectures uninspiring.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. All merit systems, whether based on peer review, administrative review, student review, or some combination have one ultimate effect: they increase the power of management. Can you imagine what student reviews of a progressive professor would have looked like in the early 1950s? Incidentally, the Detroit teachers' strike is at core a resistance to merit ratings. This should be seen in the same light as the struggle of Italian auto workers in 1969 against small variations in pay for a multitude of different jobs. Carrol
