The elephant in the classroom: perspectives on Rate My Professors

Chapman professors share their perspectives on the popular professor rating site Rate My Professors. Collage by SAM ANDRUS, Photo Editor

Each semester, when it comes time to register for classes, Rate My Professors becomes my temporary best friend. I sift through reviews of each of my prospective professors, often not even bothering to click on their profile if their rating dares to reach below a three. But each time, I inevitably come across a particularly harsh review and feel a twinge of guilt. 

Professors probably see these reviews, right? Why don’t any of them ever talk about it? Why is this always an unspoken topic between students and professors?

Real quotes from the website include “Her goal in life is to bore you into a coma,” “hated every minute of it!” and “CHOOSE ANOTHER TEACHER!” It’s essentially a public “burn book” for anyone to see at any time.

But Rate My Professors also features glowing reviews and five-star profiles. The site, which mimics the Yelp interface, allows students to rate their professors on a scale of one to five — five being the best — and includes separate scores for quality and difficulty as well as questions about textbook usage and space for short reviews. 

The Panther spoke to several Chapman professors about their own relationship to Rate My Professors, and whether or not it’s an apt tool for measuring teaching effectiveness.

Julye Bidmead, a professor in the religious studies department, does not see the site as a credible resource. She looked at Rate My Professors when it was released about 20 years ago and hasn’t returned since. 

“Even though they were good reviews, I didn't think it was fair,” Bidmead said. “It doesn’t seem to be a very balanced website; it’s extreme. Sometimes, they love the class because they think the professor is easy or hot — that’s another thing, I don’t like the descriptions of the way someone looks.”

As the director of Chapman's Center for Undergraduate Excellence, Bidmead doesn’t just dislike the system from the standpoint of a professor, but also does not see value in it as a tool for undergraduate education.

“It's a hindrance for students,” Bidemad said. “The way I see students gaining excellence or proficiency in a subject is by actually doing research or working with the Center for Undergraduate Excellence and getting to know professors on a one-on-one basis.”

Psychology professor John Hunter, on the other hand, used Rate My Professors throughout his own student years and found it quite helpful.

“I realized that the quality of a class — and my success in a class — was often dependent on the professor, not just the subject matter,” Hunter said. “I thought of it as a way of reading product reviews about a professor.”

Scott Anderson, a professor of accounting, approaches Rate My Professors with a similar business-minded attitude, seeing the site as reflective of his success in encouraging student growth.

“I view it as a consumer response,” Anderson said. “Only about 10% of my time in front of a classroom is effective as teaching. The other 90% of the students’ interaction is them teaching themselves. I can help organize it, I can provide insights, I can do a number of things, but the learning is done by the student. My job is to motivate them to learn.”

Anderson also said that Rate My Professors can be helpful in gauging how his teaching compares to others in his department, because Chapman-sponsored course evaluations only report school-wide averages, but departmental numbers aren’t broken down.

“I went to Stanford Business School, and there, at the end of the semester, everyone rated their professors and then they published the ratings in the newspaper,” Anderson said. “Here, they homogenize the information to the point where you get individual feedback but you don't know how you really stand against your peers in the department.”

Ultimately, whether those The Panther spoke to were for or against Rate My Professors, they emphasized just how seriously they consider student feedback.

“When we look over evaluations as professors, nine out of 10 of the comments are positive, but the one that sticks in our mind, the one that keeps us up at night, is that one negative comment,” Hunter said.  “Those things really hit home — the compliments just go off of your shoulders, but any negative feedback sticks with you. So I get it, why other professors maybe would not want to look. But I'm someone who's constantly seeking, as a professor, to improve, change and listen to student feedback.”