College Faculty and Receptivity to Outside Evaluation?

Parent Cafe
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<p>I have argued in several threads that the USNWR Peer Assessment has many faults and needs major revisions. One suggestion that I have made has been to introduce faculty evaluations by non-academics, specifically students, alumni and employers. My personal belief is that academics generally would resist such moves for many reasons, not least because it dilutes their power of sole judgment as currently exists under the USNWR survey. </p>

<p>I’m not entirely sure what the faculty reaction would be to student and alumni input, but I suspect that faculty would see these views (perhaps correctly) as too narrow and parochial. Re the use of corporate perspectives for judging faculty effectiveness, my expectation is that most faculty, particularly those in non-business related fields, would refuse to accept any judgmental legitimacy of corporate employers. </p>

<p>Do you have any thoughts on how faculty would react to the input of students, alumni and employers in the assessment of the job that the faculty is doing?</p>

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<p>Which of the top 100 schools are turning out students that employers are finding unemployable? Which schools do employers think don't educate their students?</p>

<p>Students already make their evaluations. They make their evaluations by applying and matriculating to colleges. They may be wrong about colleges, but they may be just as wrong in filling out questionnaires.
Right now students and families make their decisions by their pocketbooks and their feet. </p>

<p>Employers don't have a clue how to measure what is going on in the classroom. </p>

<p>You have fallen into the fallacy of being successful in one field, business, and thinking that makes you an expert in another field, education. It doesn't.</p>

<p>You can be an expert in something and overall, be a moron.</p>

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<p>Course evaluation publications, either online or in print, are available at most schools. Students have a good idea of what to expect in a course. Many schools provide formal evaluation forms to students at the end of a term, which may play a significant role in tenure decisions.</p>

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<p>dstark,
Well, at least you said that I was successful in business….so I guess I got that going for me. Thanks for that. :)</p>

<p>As for the balance of your comment, I don’t pretend to be an expert on education, but I (like you and everyone else on this board) am a consumer. Some of the consumers are students, some are parents, some are employers. Few, if any, of us are experts in education, but that does not automatically disqualify us from being able to make observations and perhaps even judgments about what we see going on in academia.</p>

<p>For your opening statement,
“Which of the top 100 schools are turning out students that employers are finding unemployable?”</p>

<p>I would hope that the answer is very few. But then that implies that the colleges would all receive an equal score in how well prepared the kids are and I know that that is just not the case. For comparison, the variation in the academic-created Peer Assessment for a Top 100 USNWR school is between 2.6 and 4.9. </p>

<p>For students, I am certain that a college student is better able to judge the faculty of a college after actually experiencing time in the classroom. High school students selecting schools have only the experience of a few class visits during their college selection process. You can’t be serious that you think high school students are personally making an informed decision about the quality of collegiate teaching when they apply to college. </p>

<p>For employers, I think we have a pretty decent idea of what is being produced and what a school values and teaches. From regular contact with the schools and their graduates, one can get a pretty good sense of how the students at a school are being trained to think and to work. Personally I would have as much or more faith in a businessperson’s perspective on faculty teaching as I would on an academic’s view. </p>

<p>Finally, let me reiterate my original question which was that I am looking for your perspective on how you think faculty would react to being evaluated by students, alumni, and employers. I’d appreciate a constructive response (or none at all) rather than a personal attack. </p>

<p>idad,
I know about the student surveys, but I am wondering about information that could be broadly used and seen by aspiring college students so that they could see how the current students at a college view their faculty.</p>

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<p>"For employers, I think we have a pretty decent idea of what is being produced and what a school values and teaches. From regular contact with the schools and their graduates, one can get a pretty good sense of how the students at a school are being trained to think and to work. Personally I would have as much or more faith in a businessperson’s perspective on faculty teaching as I would on an academic’s view"</p>

<p>OK. You go first. Give us your ranking. Give us how many students make up your ranking. Whch schools make up your ranking? What area of the country your business is located? The nature of the business? What are the shortcomings of the students from particular schools? What and why can't they do what is necessary to help your business? </p>

<p>Let's say you get to decide the rankings so the rankings that are published and used all over the country are yours. 1 to 50. All yours. What does this mean? Others are now supposed to take your rankings and do what?</p>

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<p>“Give us your ranking. Give us how many students make up your ranking. Whch schools make up your ranking? What area of the country your business is located? The nature of the business? What are the shortcomings of the students from particular schools? What and why can't they do what is necessary to help your business?”</p>

<p>Good questions all and very legitimate ones. How about applying the same standard to those academics currently completing the Peer Assessment? </p>

<p>Your questions are a bit off the topic of this thread (I”d still like your opinion on how you think faculty would react to be graded by students, alumni, and employers). But in answer to your question I have made suggestions in other threads about getting employer input. For example, </p>

<p>“start with the big cities all over the country and ask the five or ten or twenty or fifty biggest employers how they would rank the schools at which they recruit. Try this in Boston, Hartford, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Raleigh Durham, Charlotte, Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Memphis, Little Rock, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville, Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Tulsa, Omaha, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego and other cities I am sure I have missed. Heck, maybe even add in an international component if you like. </p>

<p>Do this kind of a survey and tell the results (maybe break them out by city and/or region) to the public and the madness that now surrounds this college admissions process will subside quickly. People will get the message that employers recognize that there are a LOT of great schools around the country and that you don’t need to attend the USNWR Top 20 in order to be considered talented and more than capable of performing in a job.”</p>

<p>I am not saying to take my rankings and I’m not sure how you reach this conclusion from my posts. I have an opinion, but it is a limited one (sort of like the academics opining in the PA survey) and you would need similar input from employers all over the country to get a usable result. </p>

<p>From an employer’s perspective, I believe strongly that regional differences of opinion exist and that quality college options abound in every region in the country. But what’s important to the manufacturer in Pittsburgh differs from what is important to the financial services firm in NYC which differs from the software developer in Phoenix and so on. And that’s to say nothing of the breadth of students and colleges that participate in the recruiting process with each company. But the Phoenix company can make a judgment about the student that they hired from ASU or U Arizona and they are in a position to judge how well that student was prepared compared to others that they have hired who may have come from a more or less heralded college.</p>

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<p>For one thing hiring and employee evaluation are not even done by the same people much of the time. Then you have people moving around so who does the rating? Then there is the small sample size as most companies only hire up to maybe 20 ( and usually far fewer) from any one school in one year and they could be in everything from accting to marketing--so are you grading the accting facutly or the entire school? Totally unworkable.</p>

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<p>Students are notorious for giving high marks to professors who are entertaining and easy graders. I'm not sure they really would do any better on this type of survey. Most students can only compare college teaching to high school teaching. Unless you can sit in on whole courses at different universities, and read the corrected exams, problem sets and papers and do a real comparison, I can't imagine how you would do this.</p>

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<p>100% spot on, mathmom!</p>

<p>That's not to say ONLY entertaining easy teachers get good evaluations, but that entertaining, easy teachers are almost always hugely popular.</p>

<p>There's the same problem with student evaluations of their own college experiences, by the way. Their only frame of reference is high school, and being fun and easy are the major criteria. Bear that in mind next time someone trumpets the outcome of such and such study or ranking based on student opinion surveys.</p>

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<p>barrons,
The objections you raise are all valid. They also apply equally well to the current Peer Assessment system where the President/Provost/Dean of Admissions is supposed to make judgments on faculty at other schools, probably a large number of which he/she has never visited and knows very little about. As far as your question about evaluating different work functions, the same problem exists in assigning a PA score to a university. Do you give the grade because of the great researcher in the Chemistry department or do you consider the faculty in the Speech Communications department or the professor in the statistics area? </p>

<p>Mathmom and 4thFloor,
The student assessment could only be on an internal looking basis. No way for a student to evaluate the teaching at other schools. I’m not sure how you solve the popular professor issue, but one result of such a survey is that professors would have greater motivation for presenting their information in an understandable and interesting fashion. Furthermore, such a survey might identify those faculty “stars” who are well-known perhaps for their research, but whose classroom efforts may be a little less stellar. </p>

<p>dstark,
In thinking more about your questions and my response above, let’s consider this on a micro level as applied to the San Francisco Bay Area. Ask the top employers to rank the top schools. The universe might look like the following:</p>

<p>Employers: Advanced Micro Devices, Agilent Technologies, Bechtel, Chevron, Cisco Systems, Clorax, Con-way Transportation, Del Monte, Gap, Golden West Financial, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Knight Ridder, Levi Strauss, Longs Drug Stores, Lucasfilms, Maxtor, McKesson, Oracle, PG&E, Ross Stores, Safeway, Sanmina, Solectron, Sun Micro, Charles Schwab, Visa, Wells Fargo, Williams Sonoma. Add in some of the local venture capital, private equity, and financial services firms (including the hedge funds). Add in some of the professional services firms and some of the life sciences companies. I am certainly missing some employers, but I hope that you would agree that this is a decently broad cross section of employers for the Bay Area.</p>

<p>Now create a series of questions for these employers, eg, ask which schools they hire from and which schools they have regular contact with and a picture will begin to evolve over time for which colleges are the most favored by employers in the Bay Area. How has this universe of schools changed over the last year, three years, five years, etc? Ask how good a job they feel the faculty have done at each of those schools to prepare their students to think critically as a result of their studies. Ask if those opinions have changed over the last year, three years, five years, etc. And so on. </p>

<p>The result would be based on actual direct contact with the graduates, the actual products of the university. If I were an aspiring college student, such information would be of great value and interest to me.</p>

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<p>I have seen numerous student evaluations and find them generally worthless. Students have little or no basis for comparison. The argument could be made that faculty can be compared between different disciplines and courses, but that really does not work well. I also agree with mathmom. Teachers who are entertaining and witty are likely to score well. Let's face it - many courses are not real fun, but often involve hard and sometimes boring work. This is often true for introductory courses. I think this is one of the reasons that there are so many negative comments about larger lecture courses. Often in the sciences, the introductory courses cover lots of material and provide a basis for future study, but they are often basically demanding and not fun.</p>

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<p>While no one has addressed the question directly, I think all of the posters so far would say that college faculty would NOT like to be judged by students, alumni, and employers. Right?</p>

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<p>Not at all. For one thing even intro science classes can be lively</p>

<p><a href="http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>My alumni group just raised money and named a center after our lead prof.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bus.wisc.edu/gazette/february2007/graaskamp.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bus.wisc.edu/gazette/february2007/graaskamp.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Other alum groups have their own favorites</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bus.wisc.edu/asap/program/hawk.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bus.wisc.edu/asap/program/hawk.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Hawkette, the companies you mentioned hire from many schools. I think you are giving the schools too much credit. I think you give employers too much credit if you think they can look at an employee and judge a professor or professors or even a whole school based on an employee or employees. </p>

<p>If you would really like to see employers' rankings, this could be a new business for you. Develop a questionnaire, mail it to thousands of companies, you'll get some responses back, and publish rankings based on these responses. A few people will take them seriously. If you get enough critical mass, you will have a new business.</p>

<p>I still have no idea how I would use these rankings. I take rankings based on thousands of different companies in different industries in different locations with different skill sets, with different pay scales and different opportunites and end up with a singular ranking? Then I use this singular ranking how?</p>

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<p>While no one has addressed the question directly, I think all of the posters so far would say that college faculty would NOT like to be judged by students, alumni, and employers. Right?</p>

<p>Let's say I agree with you and I don't think the college faculty would like to be judged. </p>

<p>Then what?</p>

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<p>barrons,
Thanks for your comments. Too often we think that when judgments are being made, they have to be negative. As your post shows, there are many positive examples at a university and effective and engaged alumni groups can do a lot to recognize and reward that. Frankly, I think that the more judgments by these groups, the better for the student (as I’ve already argued), but also for the top professors. If the professors are good, they know it and don’t fear the process. The cream will rise. I’m just thinking about ways to better recognize that rather than allowing academicians to be the sole deciders of faculty merit. </p>

<p>dstark,
While it was not the topic of the thread, you raise a good point. I agree that college faculties can only do so much in the development of a student. That is a large reason why I believe that the quality of one’s peers at a college has greater importance than the faculty that you take classes from. </p>

<p>Nonetheless, samples of graduates from a variety of schools can provide some insights into a particular school’s strengths or weaknesses. For example, if Genentech hires students from UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC Davis and other schools to work in a lab, they can see who is prepared to do the work and who needs greater levels of training. Sure, individual factors predominate, but if they see a consistent pattern that shows the UCB students as outperforming the students from Stanford and/or other schools, this naturally leads them to try to understand why. The college generally, and faculty specifically, are possible explanations. In the case of Genentech and the other life sciences companies in northern California, they have over 90,000 employees and are hiring regularly with over 6000 new employees added in the last year. They do have a clue about what is going on in the colleges and the quality of the product coming out of various schools.</p>

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<p>I would like to see other schools do what Cal Poly does. I believe Brandeis does this too. Ask their graduating students what they are going to do after they graduate and then publish the information. I can then go to a school's web site and see in detail where their students, by major, are going to go to work, or grad school. Maybe see what the pay is going to be. This is still an imperfect measure because some people do well after graduation, some people do well many years later, some people are interested in other things that have nothing to do with their education.</p>

<p>But I would like to see more schools do this.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.careerservices.calpoly.edu/Students/CareerPlanning/gsr.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.careerservices.calpoly.edu/Students/CareerPlanning/gsr.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>If companies want to publish which schools they like that would be great, but that is the companies' decision, not the schools. </p>

<p>Then making a ranking of all this information? The ranking is going to be subjective and inaccurate. ;)</p>

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<p>College faculty are judged, by their peers. Tenure is not easy to get and often involves research, publication, service, and yes, teaching. Also, students are not quite as shallow as some make them out to be and often the evaluations tend to be rather informative. (hawkette: many schools publish the evals and may be obtained quite easily. Some schools require viewers to be enrolled students, but it is not difficult to find a student who will provide access.) In my view, the role of college is not to prepare one to be a good employee, but to be an independent thinker who may end up challenging the way an employer does things. Society might benefit want from fewer students that employers say make good employees rather than more. The colleges that produce the rebels, perhaps should be the ones rewarded with a higher rating.</p>

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<p>dstark,
I like what you say Cal Poly and Brandeis are doing and agree that it would be useful to see such information. One natural follow-up question is what role did the faculty have in the student’s success (or failure)? Who knows? As you point out, it’s a highly subjective and probably inaccurate response, but the same is true for the PA and yet many will accept that number as really meaning something. </p>

<p>I compare PA again to the business world. Suppose your business is running a chain of drug stores. In the academic model, the only ones who can judge the quality of your business is other drug store owners. That’s ludicrous as customers see how the business operates and experience it regularly, suppliers know a lot about the business and how efficiently it functions, your employees know the strengths and weaknesses of the business, etc. These stakeholders can make a constructive contribution to the evaluation of the business just as students, alumni and employers can about a college and its faculty. Maybe someone can explain to me why these groups shouldn’t have a voice in the evaluation of faculty. I can’t understand why academics are the only group with the power to judge. </p>

<p>idad,
I understand that college faculty are judged by their peers. So am I and so probably are you. But the evaluations for me and again probably you don’t stop there. When we get evaluated, multiple groups are involved and there are defined, relevant criteria for measurement. </p>

<p>Re the role of college, I concur that the job is not just developing a good employee (but this can’t be ignored as the large majority of students go to college in the first place in order to get a better job and hopefully a better lot in life). I share at least part of your view of the role of a college and believe passionately in the need to teach students independent, critical thinking skills. I’m not so sure that faculty, and particularly those whose reputations are made on research activity, share that passion.</p>

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<p>Businesses have a say where it counts. They don't have to hire somebody from a school they don't like.</p>

<p>If PA is changed to your liking and the rankings change or even if they don't, how am I supposed to use the new rankings?</p>

<p>Let's say a school has a PA of 4.5 because of what businesses think of a school. Another school has a PA of 4.1. Then what? How would I use this? </p>

<p>You want a segment of the population that doesn't care about rankings and doesn't really understand education to rank schools.</p>

<p>Businesses don't care very much about US News rankings. Parents of high schoolers care about USNWR. College administraters care. </p>

<p>Go ask heads of businesses, employees and suppliers what the USNWR rankings are. Ask them about PA. </p>

<p>They don't know.</p>

<p>You don't like PA so you want it changed. I'm telling you. Change it anyway you want. You will have different rankings. I keep asking you, how is the public supposed to use the new rankings? </p>

<p>My son is a senior and so I just saw his class make their decisions. I'm really impressed. Very few kids used USNWR. Actually, I don't know any kid that based his decision on USNWR this year. They chose schools where they felt comfortable.</p>

<p>If you asked the kids about PA at my kid's high school, I don't think any kid even knows the PA of the college they chose.</p>

<p>Hawkette, you wrote in another post what you value in a school. Isn't that more important than rankings?</p>