As an educator, I spend a huge amount of time thinking about teaching and learning. I believe strongly that students should have a forum to share their thoughts, both positive and negative, about a course or a professor, and that such feedback should be taken seriously. At the same time, that same forum should help inform students about their future course selection. In searching for such a space, many students turn to Rate My Professors (RMP). RMP is a website where college students can post and read reviews for their professors. It has clear guidelines that state students may only write a review for a professor with whom they have taken a class. Students are also limited to one post per professor. However, there is no formal verification for either of these guidelines.
As a scientist, I know that the data should inform my conclusions rather than my beliefs. And while a comprehensive statistical study of RMP is outside the scope of this article, even with a simple analysis, I suggest that there is both mathematical and qualitative evidence that RMP does not provide a useful forum for either students’ venting or pre-course selection research.
When I was asked to write this piece, I hadn’t looked at my RMP page for several years––I have now. While there are numerous positive comments, and high ratings, there are many more negative comments, and low ratings; I read through them all and sulked for a while…and remembered why I don’t look at RMP. If the point is to provide useful feedback to improve a course or inform potential students, then I found RMP severely lacking. However, if the point of RMP is for disgruntled students to make their professors feel bad, then mission accomplished.
I’m not anti-RMP because of my poor reviews (even if they hurt my feelings); I’m against it because it’s not an honest or accurate reflection of student opinions. As a comparison, I examined the Tufts-administered anonymous course evaluations from the past four semesters. I see that my overall rating from 483 students is 4.1 out of 5, compared to the embarrassingly low 2.8 out of 5 from 124 students on RMP. What’s especially striking is the 43 out of 124 students on RMP who rated me as “very poor” compared to the 12 out of 483 in the Tufts evaluations who rated me as very poor. That’s the difference between 34.7% and 2.5% of students rating me the lowest score on both platforms. If we assume that the Tufts evaluations represent the true underlying distribution of student ratings, which is reasonable, then a simple statistical examination suggests that obtaining 43 out of 124 very poor RMP ratings has a 5.5 x 10-37 chance of happening––virtually impossible. RMP clearly does not represent the true distribution of student opinions. And while it’s frustrating that the RMP ratings are so negative, I know the RMP reviews are not a true reflection of my teaching––but do students know that?
In today’s polarized world, RMP stands as yet another example of extreme viewpoints dominating the conversation. In addition to the negative ratings discussed above, there are certainly glowing reviews in both the Tufts evaluations and RMP. Of the 124 ratings, 28 (22.6%) scored me as a 5, the highest rating. But these statistics are statistically significantly lower than the most positive reviews from the Tufts evaluations: 223 out of 443 (46.2%) students rated me as excellent. Again, assuming the Tufts evaluations represent the true underlying distribution, there is a 3.0 x 10-8 chance of reproducing the RMP ratings. When looking at the math, it’s clear that RMP is not a place for students to submit thoughtful and useful reviews, but instead a place for students to vent their frustration with earning a B or A- (the two most common complaints), the grading scheme, being caught cheating, or some other grievance. I’m not discounting the real feelings of those students who submitted negative reviews, simply demonstrating that they are not representative of all students who take my classes.
It would be folly to think that professors don’t like RMP because of the bad reviews. Getting negative reviews sucks, but we get them in the formal evaluations and in many other areas of our academic lives. We are accustomed to criticism––it’s how we learn and grow. My teaching has vastly improved from feedback. In fact, I put tremendous value on student feedback; every semester, I change my courses as a direct response to suggestions, ideas, and criticism provided by students.
Just as I believe that students should have a place to write and read reviews for classes and professors, I also think students should have a place to vent. But let’s not pretend that RMP is something it’s not. In the absence of a true alternative to RMP, it is easy to understand why it’s still used by students. I’m curious why the formal Tufts evaluations aren’t available to students, at least in some format. They are a much better reflection of student opinion, sampling the full spectrum of ratings rather than oversampling the worst ones. It’s possible that there is some legal or administrative reason for not releasing them; however, in the spirit of transparency and to be part of the solution, I am willing to share my formal evaluations with any student who is interested in taking my class. No more need for RMP––use AYP (ask your professor) instead!
Artwork by Nicole Mousad