Student Evaluations of Teaching Encourages Poor Teaching and Contributes to Grade Inflation: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) do not measure teaching effectiveness, and their widespread use by university administrators in decisions about faculty hiring, promotions, and merit increases encourages poor teaching and causes grade inflation. Students need to get good grades, and faculty me...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Basic and applied social psychology Vol. 42; no. 4; pp. 276 - 294
Main Author: Stroebe, Wolfgang
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Mahwah Routledge 03.07.2020
Psychology Press
Subjects:
Administrators
College faculty
Educational evaluation
Hiring
Inflation
Merit increases
Students
Teacher evaluations
Teachers
Teaching
ISSN:0197-3533, 1532-4834
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) do not measure teaching effectiveness, and their widespread use by university administrators in decisions about faculty hiring, promotions, and merit increases encourages poor teaching and causes grade inflation. Students need to get good grades, and faculty members need to get good SETs. Therefore, SETs empower students to shape faculty behavior. This power can be used to reward lenient-grading instructors who require little work and to punish strict-grading instructors. This article reviews research that shows that students (a) reward teachers who grade leniently with positive SETs, (b) reward easy courses with positive SETs, and (c) choose courses that promise good grades. The study also shows that instructors want (and need) good SETs.
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ISSN:0197-3533
1532-4834
DOI:10.1080/01973533.2020.1756817