For those of you that have been blindly picking courses based on what someone’s second cousin thought, I am about to make your academic life a whole lot easier. Just to be right up front, we are receiving no compensation of any kind from rate my professor, I just believe in the usefulness of it that much! The basic idea behind the site is that students can rate a professor in 3 different academic categories: Clarity, Helpfulness, and Easiness. There is also an overall rank, and just for kicks, a “hotness” ranking (humorously symbolized by a jalapeño pepper). There is also a place to state any comments about the course or professor. I’m not sure about every school, but I think the vast majority of post-secondary institutions conduct course/professor reviews at the end of each course. We used to joke that they used these to start the boilers because there seemed to be no correlation between tenure being granted, and who was actually a decent teacher. Rate My Professor remedies this situation by giving students a public forum to tell each other what the course was really like.
Strength In Numbers
As long as a prof has 5 or more reviews I have always found the rankings to be extremely accurate. I’ve made a point of mentioning the site to my friends, and I have never heard a single person complain about being misled. The only caveat I would add is that obviously if a professor only has a couple reviews, it may be too small a sample size to go on unconditionally. You always have to account for a couple of outlier students who just received a bad grade because they were bad students and now want to blame the world for it. Many of the comments are where you can gain especially valuable insight into a course or specific professor. A comment such as, “Extremely dedicated to providing after hours help,” or, “Very entertaining lecture style,” score huge points in my book. I personally would place more weight on the Clarity and Helpfulness rankings since I wasn’t usually intimidated by “hard” courses in the Faculty of Arts, but I do know people that actually got degrees and high GPAs simply by picking professors with extremely easy rankings. The system does work.
I Like Anything That Pisses Off “The Man”
It is ultimately because of this effectiveness that professors truly hate it! Naturally this just gives the forum even more credibility with me because I love anything that tweaks the nose of upper academia. Professors love control, and they love to believe that they are above being evaluated by lowly undergrads. By and large, most professors almost have to be a little eccentric to spend that much time in academia when you really think about it. Rate My Professor takes all that control out of their hands, and allows an anonymous and honest review of their skills, style, and competency. I think it is one of the only democratic venues in a system that is fairly authoritarian. Go ahead and Google “professor’s opinions of rate my prof” and scroll past the actual site. You’ll soon find all kinds of professors who are worried about what this is doing to their reputation and talking about how invalid the whole system is. A lot of words like “ludicrous” and “ridiculous” are used to describe the rankings. I only have one message for these professors who have had their tail feathers ruffled: Quit posting on internet forums and crying about what those nasty students said about you, and instead, get off your butt and learn about how to be a better teacher! I have given numerous professors very high marks even though their classes were difficult. Most students that actually care enough to go online and fill out a ranking are probably fairly trustworthy, and I guarantee they are more reliable than any measure that the university uses.
Rate My Professor Is A Good Tool If You Need A GPA Booster?
As a side note, I mentioned above that Rate My Professor is an easy way to boost your GPA by picking a lot of professors that are rank high in the “easiness” category. I don’t like this idea, and I feel that if you’re paying for an education you may as well learn as much as possible (I guess if someone else is paying for it, you should also learn as much as possible!). I do think it shows how arbitrary the whole idea of GPA is however. I’m not sure if a better system exists, but I think it’s too bad that someone who knows about RMP stands a much better chance of getting into a GPA-dependant faculty like Law. It really is that easy to game the system, I’ve seen it firsthand.
The Feedback That’s “Too Honest” For Some
Check out the site and tell us what you think. There are probably too many personal attacks on there (as there are on any public forum), but I think it is extremely effective at upgrading your student experience. Many of my friends that I have recommended it to now use it to pick the majority of their classes. I think there is even an argument to be made that it helps a “free-market-esque” system develop as far as attracting good professors to your university and rewarding them. If more students are constantly signing up for the highest ranked professors’ courses, this should send a fairly clear message to top university brass. Now if only they could read clear messages from rate my professor…
It seems like a perfect resource! It used to be word of mouth now online. I guess it is a sign of the times.
This sounds like a very good idea for college students. It is difficult to talk to many people in person like when I went to school. The internet didn’t exist back then.
The crazy thing is these days that my students cannot honestly comprehend of world without the internet. I honestly don’t think people understand what a revolutionary idea it was. I personally think it’s the biggest innovation since learning to control electricity.
Great resource. I don’t think it applies to Canadian profs though. I will have to look into that.
I must say I really appreciate these sites. I find the feedback from others really helpful.
Oh it definitely does apply to Canadian Profs!
Good to know. I will definitely reference it in the future then.
You are spot on about being slightly strange to saty for a long time in academia – I say that we become ‘institutionalised’ just like in the Shawshank Redemption. As to students evaluating their Profs – it is done everywhere (at least all universities in the UK do it). It sounds like a good idea but I would like to mention two negative effects: professors start seeing themselves as teachers rather than enablers of learning; and they start entertaining rather than opening doors to knowledge. BTW, I always get top marks and I do teach epistemology.
I don’t see these as negatives at all Maria. Good teachers are enablers of learning and vice versa. If there is no “teaching” going on, couldn’t you just give me a book to read and “enable me?” Professors should at least make an attempt to present their information in a relatively entertaining way. If they have a true passion for their subject matter, this shouldn’t take much of an effort!
Well, they are different though. I see colleagues who stand infront of their students and lecture (mumble) for two hours; the outcome is the teaching rather than the learning. Lecturing is a necessary bit not suffcicient condition for learning.
That isn’t teaching at all Maria, that is doing a bare minimum to fulfill a contract. Lecturing is a great tool in a teacher’s arsenal, but you’re right, it shouldn’t begin and end with that.
I am on the fence with the rating systems that are out there for the Professors. Rating systems were introduced as I was going through my program and I watched how a lot of my courses became watered down. The older professors stuck to their guns, but the younger ones that were trying to earn a position blatantly made their curriculum easier so that their ratings wouldn’t be that harsh.
It would be good if the institutions used the reviews to correct the outliers; scrutinizing the very good evaluations just as much as the very bad ones, and ignoring the rest. Professors are not there solely to teach. They are also responsible for research, mentoring, and outreach. Finding someone who is good at all four is pretty rare. If the person is a full time lecturer, then the story is different.
I think we underestimate students. There are many professors on RMP that have “low” easiness scores (meaning they have hard courses) that still get top overall marks. Students can respect a high standards as long as they are upheld by the professor as well in my experience. My problem is that professors are rewarded based solely on research in a lot of ways, so it is vastly disproportionate to the other three considerations you just mentioned.
I remember filling out those end of the semester reviews too. Don’t think they ever amounted to much either. There’s a big difference between a professor and someone who teaches. Most of my profs were not teachers. They were all about lecturing with very little help in between. Once I got into my major did I see actual teaching going on.
I can accept a prof that focuses on lecturing, but they have to be REALLY good at lecturing. There are so many “academics” out there that are completely disconnected from the art of effective communication that it is scary.
I love this! I wish they would have had this 10 years ago when I was in college, would have made things a long easier :)
“It is ultimately because of this effectiveness that professors truly hate it! Naturally this just gives the forum even more credibility with me because I love anything that tweaks the nose of upper academia. Professors love control, and they love to believe that they are above being evaluated by lowly undergrads.”
Totally agree with this comment. I hope this site continues to be successful.
Thanks Jenny. Nothing like a couple of mistreated undergrads crying in their discount beer together eh?
I remember this from the good ol’ days!
I remember using it- it was very useful.
I think it has been for a lot of students Y and T.
I want to say that I would have wanted this in place 15 years ago when I was in school. But, I did research my potential professors by using word of mouth and just “listening” to what other professors may or may not have said. I am satisfied that I did for the most part pick the professors that were great for me.
I’m glad you had a solid post-secondary experience Lisa. Isn’t it crazy how streamlined technology has made the process though? I can get a fairly thorough report on 80% of my old English Faculty in a half hour!
I love any kind of feedback loops that gives the edge to the “little guy”. And I hope that conscientious professors that care about ratings would also rebut any negative reviews. Power to the People! :-)
Definitely agree on transcendent feedback loops being important.
I get good scores on RateMyProfessor, I think more because I’m entertaining/funny rather than because of my skills (or lack of them!). I’m not crazy about it, though. It seems to be used mostly by early-year weaker and sketchier students — the ones who are looking for easy profs because they’re not good enough to do well otherwise. I guess for them it’s a worthwhile resource. But by the time students get far enough into their degree that they can really recognize effective teaching, they’ve grown out of using RMP.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it more of a big thing about five years ago?
I’m not sure what the user rates look like these days Gerard. I agree that as students enter graduate studies, they “recognize good teaching.” However, I would also submit that they get better teaching as they go as well. It’s well known that a lot of terrible profs teach to intro-level classes. I admit that there a lot of people that use RMP for “impure” reasons, but I maintain that it is by far the best tool I have seen for picking professors in your undergraduate degree. Much better than the non-transparent methods universities supposedly use.
I’m glad you get good rankings and put effort into making your lessons entertaining Gerard! The real question is, did you get the vaunted jalapeño pepper rating?! ;)
Yes, I do get the pepper! Which is another reason to distrust the system!
Haha, atta boy!
As a student, I would just like to side with some of these professors – there are a lot of good/great professors not getting particularly awesome ratings on RateMyProf. I think this is particularly the case for those who teach first and second year classes, when some of us still equate easy with good prof.
That’s not to say I haven’t used RateMyProf, just that, as you mentioned, I find the comments infinitely more useful than the actual ratings. Lots of comments like “GUARANTEED A+!!!!!” tell me that chances are, this guy isn’t as good of his prof as his class is super easy – and probably not one I want to take.
On the flip side of the whole thing, there is something to be said for word of mouth. In my (very small) faculty, there is one professor who is AWFUL. Like, doesn’t even approach teaching anything in the course outline awful. Our (near-constant) frustration with this prof eventually reached one of the other professors, who encouraged us to speak up in a very old-fashioned way: we complained to the dean. That professor is now under some very serious review by the department.
My message to other students is that if you truly thing your professor is terrible (and you’re not just griping because you’re lazy), there IS something you can do that your university will listen to. Posting a negative review on RateMyProf is definitely one thing you can (and should) do, but if you really want to help out your fellow students, you should get a group together and complain loudly (but you must have evidence!!) to your department head.
I’m glad you have a positive experience “Student” when you went to administration. Unfortunately I have heard many, many, negative stories from students in similar circumstances. The rules of tenure make it very difficult for anything good to happen in these situations. I have found it especially impossible if a professor is any sort of visible minority (because of the ultra-sensitive culture we live in). Hopefully my experiences have been the exception to the rule and yours are the more common ones. If universities and professors are sick of not being portrayed properly on the site I think they should create their own “official” site that offered a competing public forum. Right now, RMP is the only game in town, and because of that it is decisively the best!
Why do you equate ratemyprofessor with sticking it to the man? it’s owned by mtv. when you use rmp, you’re basically helping mtv rack up more profits. rmp is not some subversive, empowering website. it’s just more of the same old consumer ethos- using people’s insecurities to sell them shit. learn to make up your own mind when evaluating your classes.
Whoa Mary, coming a little hard there?! Ok, so your argument is flawed on several levels. First and foremost, it’s not MTV I care about “sticking it too” it’s the very idea that I do get to evaluate my classes on a public forum! Do you think there is someone behind a keyboard from MTV flooding the RMP archives with reviews? The “man” I’m referring to is big university/college administration. The idea behind RMP is that students can share their experience with others. I would like to thank RMP for providing that public forum for me.
In regards to MTV, it was originally fairly proactive and paradigm shifting if not completely “counter-culture.” There is no doubt that marketing and slick executives made money, but to harbour that much resentment isn’t healthy!
Wow, Teacher Man, you sound a little touchy. There there.
To be honest, RMP, though originally conceived as a useful and proactive tool, has indeed given people a very problematic mindset. Most people I know pick their classes based on this site, and I think they cheat themselves out of an education in the process. Certainly there is more to a teacher than whether he or she is “entertaining” or easy or “crystal clear” or supposedly helpful; some of my most valuable educational experiences were from teachers that were not entertaining or easy or even very approachable. In fact, the teachers I remember the most were the ones who forced me to rise to their level. They were challenging, not easy or entertaining or affable or sweet. Had I rated them at the time, I probably would have given them low scores. Looking back a couple of years later, they were the ones who had the greatest impact on me as a student. The teachers who were funny and entertaining I barely remember at all.
I do think that it is troubling that so many students see no problems with the fact that MTV owns ratemyprofessor. I don’t think that the people at MTV are flooding the ratings, but they ARE making money from the advertising, duh. And there is nothing “paradigm shifting” [sic] or countercultural about MTV. It’s pretty much the definition of the counterculture’s co-option by a conservative economic agenda. It’s also very interesting to me that so many people in this age group see nothing wrong with treating people as products or objects. I’ve seen so many of my peers assume that classes need to be of a similar entertainment-level as a TV show or a youtube clip that I’m thinking they have a very skewed idea of what education is supposed to be. No, it’s not always entertaining. Yes, sometimes you have to wrestle with your own boredom, push through it, and measure your classes by how much you’ve learned. Ratemyprofessor can’t address that issue–it’s not designed to. It only allows you to rate your professor based on hotness, clarity, helpfulnes and easiness–not exactly heavy-hitting qualities that we should look for in educators. In other words, ratemyprofessor is all about treating students like consumers and educators like products to be purchased. And that is not the way our education system works.
Sorry Ling, definitely being a little touchy because I think my point is being missed.
I think you hit it right on the head when you state (paraphrasing) that RMP is a tool. If people want to use it to find an easy way to get a piece of paper they can do that, if they want to find a prof that is, “Hard, but fair,” they can do that too. A tool in and of itself cannot be inherently bad. If you don’t find the average user to be trustworthy, simply don’t use the tool. My response is, “Show me a better tool, a better public forum where students can honestly state their opinions without fear of reprisal or censorship.”
It’s funny we had exactly the opposite learning experiences. The professors that thought they were brilliant and were jerks I learned very little from. The professors that were smart and realized the value in being presenting the material in an entertaining fashion not only held my attention better, but set me on a path of self-directed learning, which is easily the best kind. Classes don’t have to be a TV show, but they rarely have to be boring if your teacher/professor has enthusiasm for the subject matter. To be honest, studies prove that this “push through, wrote learning” is by far the least valuable. Go ahead and find me a quote from a great innovator about how they loved boring classes and excelled in jumping through mind-numbing hoops.
I have a major problem with the way you addressed the fact that MTV makes money off of the site. The company is presenting the public with a great product to use, why aren’t they entitled to make money off of it again? Do you buy nothing that comes from a major corporation? I am fine with the conservative economic agenda co-opting whatever they want to in order to offer a valuable service. It’s a free market, people can choose to use it or not.
This was my favourite part of your soapbox speech Ling, “ratemyprofessor is all about treating students like consumers and educators like products to be purchased. And that is not the way our education system works.” HAHA! Slays me. This is EXACTLY how our education system works. Undergrad students are treated exactly like consumers… except not as good as the average consumer because higher education is a monopoly! To top brass, education at lower levels is definitely a product to be purchased. True knowledge comes from self-pursuit and personal exploration, not “pushing through” some mindless drivel from a person that hates their job. RMP successfully helped me avoid those professors, and for that I am ever thankful.
Sorry to ruin the myths you’ve been told, and false idols you’ve been worshipping.
Thank you! As a struggling sessional (have taught for 16 years) who has been rated poorly (Yet I’ve also been nominated for teaching awards 3x in recent years — I guess that doesn’t count, as it doesn’t make it onto the site) I appreciate imput from a former student who has a less short-sighted view of education. Some course are boring. I’m struggling right now to find a ‘entertaining’ way to teach Pilgrim’s Progress. I know I’m going to get slam dunked if I don’t. I do love what I’m doing — I must eh, since the most I’ve ever made is $15K a year — but it is so depressing to have students, publically, with total impunity, call you boring, stupid, lazy (I was told I got my T.A.s to mark my papers — I was required in that course to have T.A. part of the mandate of the course — as there were 130 students in the course — and I had no choice, as in, I had NO choice — that is, I wasn’t allowed to mark the papers the T.A.s marked — although I had to oversee those papers for fairness — but no, the students decided I got the T.A.s to do my work, not realising that I was a T.A. myself — but there was nothing I could do to correct that error). But thank you for offering this perspective — I’m grateful.
Can I just please add a couple of comments? One, not all your instructors are professors. Many students don’t realise that the ones teaching them especially as undersgraduates, are not tenured professors, but people who make maybe $3-4K a course (less than they would in a fast food joint) with no benefits and no security. We get rated with the same guys who have tenure and who have huge salaries and total job security. But, for eg., in our dept. for a number of years, 85% of the undergrad courses were taught by grad students and sessionals. To a student, all the same thing? Except it really isn’t. Rating someone with tons of power and influence and money as the same as someone trying to eek out a living and having to obey orders and just trying to use the 15 years of post secondary ed we got (thinking we could get jobs, we were told we could — didn’t happen for many of us and never will , the way tenure works). I know for a fact, for eg. that some sessionals and grad students have felt suicidal reading those comments. It does help weed us out — for sure. We get dumped. But a tenured professor won’t be, no matter what you write. If we are dumped — as I know some sessionals were (guys I know who spent three to four hours preparing for a one hour class and just working really hard for pittance) those ratings are permanent. Their gfs, children, parents, everyone can read them. Forever. This is good news for you – you believe all professors are wealthy, arrogant, privileged etc. — NOT true. Maybe half are. I just wonder how any of you would feel to have your first performances on your respective jobs published wihtout your input in anyway, anonymously, without hope of re-dress forever? It may indeed be true that the site has done a lot of good, been very convenient. I don’t doubt I would have looked up such a site while I was an undergrad. But being on the other end I have to say, you guys do not have the whole story. It has also been really, really damaging in ways I’m sure you’d never think of.
Thanks for stopping by C Skey. I appreciate input from an instructor, and hey, I loved Pilgrim’s Progress!
I definitely understand some of you where you are coming from. As a high school teacher I face many of the same stresses as you do, and I get many things said about me that I don’t get to respond to. Here is a tip… IGNORE IT! I’m sure you put a ton of effort into your job, and that’s great. Even better, you’re being recognized for it, so someone must think you’re doing alright! The bottom line still is that RMP provides the best current form of student feedback on the market (flawed as it is).
As far as sessional teaching & TAs and the sad portrayal of our post-secondary system, I do feel for you. There is no doubt you don’t get paid enough. I’m assuming you’re an American prof/sessional? In Canada I’ve never heard of someone making near that low a salary. The lowest I’ve ever heard of for a full-time sessional is 50K. I would honestly recommend looking into a change of scenery, maybe look at teaching English abroad or something?
That being said, the only one with the power to change your life is you! If you don’t like where you’re at, take responsibility and make it better. The whole idea that someone could get suicidal about what someone else says about them on the internet is mind-blowing to me. Do you realize that you deal with students who are young adults and pay to be in your classes? Do you have any idea what public high school students will say TO YOUR FACE on a daily basis? Never mind what goes on beyond my back! If I took it all personally I would just spend my day curled up in a little ball crying. Furthermore, nobody forced you to take that much schooling and enter an underpaid position. It does suck, and I do empathise, but please don’t play the victim here, you made your decisions, now it’s time to take responsibility for them.
How about the haters:
1) Relax
2) Take a step back and realize the site is a tool for students
3) Use their own filter to delete comments made by people who don’t see the world the same way you do
4) Go back to loving life. Remember, you are the 1% of the world!
I’m in Canada, and where I am we get paid 4 to just under 6 thousand dollars per course. Most sessionals are not full time, and grad students rarely get more than one course per term.
Cskey’s description is correct and we are often teaching in course outside of our area of expertise, and usually for the first time.
Plus we have to submit teaching evaluations as part of job applications (but not rate my prof – though who knows, they might look).
The quality of the comments at RateMyProfessor depends on the quality of the school and the quality of the students.
Top-flight students who arrive on campus prepared for college-level work and who understand the purpose of higher education appreciate a challenge and rise to it. But these are far from the majority. Many view college as voc-ed, come into the classroom unable to write a clear, literate sentence in their native language, ignorant of high-school level math, and innocent of the history and thought of the culture in which they grew up, and expect to get through courses with as little effort as possible. They expect “A” grades for “C”-level work, and when they encounter an honest assessment of, for example, a term paper that lacks focus, fails to meet the assignment’s parameters, contains plagiarized passages, and doesn’t even have a decently framed thesis, they get angry and pan the instructor.
Especially in required courses that students see as irrelevant, such as freshman comp and cultural studies courses, much of the commentary is unfair because of the underlying resentment of the requirement to take the course. Often, remarks are slanderous — in fact, I have seen comments on RateMyProfessor that are actionable. Students with passionate political and religious beliefs will write extremely negative comments about faculty on the basis of casual conversations that reveal personal thinking. The victim is never informed that negative, libelous statements have been posted and so has little or no recourse.
One of my colleagues was short-short-listed for a position at a college in the Pacific Northwest, which she deeply wanted. She was tenured at our university, had chaired her department for some years, and was an excellent teacher and researcher. After she was unexpectedly turned down for the job, she learned from a member of the search committee that she was rejected because of comments someone on the committee had found on RateMyProfessor.
I think that illustrates the danger of a site that fosters anonymous back-stabbing. When she saw the comment, she recognized its author and, had she been asked, could have explained the circumstances. But she was not asked. She was simply rejected on the basis of an anonymous slander.
Personally, I never look at the site. As an adjunct unable to find real work in the wake of a layoff, I don’t get paid enough to eat that kind of sh!t, and for the same reason, the job is not worth getting my bowels in an uproar. But then, I don’t regard what I do as a popularity contest.
Very eloquently worded commentary! I hear what you’re saying, but show me a resource for students that does what RMP does? This is the best option out there at the moment. Interesting how many professors who don’t get good reviews hate the site. I don’t usually brag about my academic credentials, but I ended up with a 4.0 GPA, and now I teach for a living, so I like to think my views on what makes a good professor have a fair degree of merit. I have honestly never had a prof that I thought was superb get a bad overall score on RMP. Sure, you have the outlier comments from jaded people, but a little bit of personal filter can take care of that. I am sorry to hear what happened to your friend. Any legitimate post-secondary institution that eliminates candidates on the basis of a unmoderated public forum probably isn’t worth working for anyway! When you accept the site for what it is – a useful tool, it makes a lot more sense.
hey y’all, i teach over at a cheesy community college IRVINE VALLEY COLLEGE, my dumb prospective students love to use this site so i jack up my ratings and flag all negative ratings, how do i get alerted? well my iphone gets a text from RMP.com when anyone leaves a review, i mean its pretty hard to flag a positive comment and get it removed, but negative ones get removed no matter how mundane even if they follow the site guidelines to a tee. LoL, try it to me yourself and you’ll see my power!! wahahaha, this will help any professor looking for a tenureship because many students will take your class because of all positive reviews monitored by you and you may even use RMP.com as a reference to the dean, happy easy tenureship y’all!
This is hilarious. I applaud you sir for figuring out a way to use the system to your advantage instead of complaining about it! I have a feeling your classes would have been just fine regardless.