<p>This isn’t about academic freedom. The point of having people with advanced academic degrees teach undergraduate courses is that there is supposed to be general agreement within a field about what beginning students should know. If there isn’t general agreement, then there’s a problem. In a well-run department, the people in charge will track what is being taught in order to protect their undergraduates.</p>
<p>Looking at how well students do in follow-on courses is extremely important. In my opinion, it is the best available way to measure professor quality. Students may love or hate a course, but in the final analysis the main purpose in taking one is to master some body of material. </p>
<p>Student evaluations are generally worthless for the reasons quoted, especially in introductory courses where students may be surprised and upset that expectations are quite different than they were in high school and one cannot get a high B just by handing in all the assignments.</p>
<p>Properly designed open-ended student evaluations may be helpful for smoothing out glitches in how a course is run and letting one know what students like/hate about it, but the students do not have enough experience to comment on class content or the way in which their mastery of the material is measured. Using success in higher level classes as a measure also helps separate the classes that make students work hard with a bunch of busywork from those in which the professor does his job of isolating and emphasizing the most important areas of study from a mass of material.</p>
<p>Colmom2 makes excellent points about the hallmarks of a properly run class. Having someone else write the exam does the students a huge disservice. People serious about actual teaching know what they’ve taught, have a good feel for when the shutters of boredom or ignorance slam shut during lectures, and take the time to tailor tests to their classes. The fact that many college courses test using nothing but multiple choice exams boggles the mind. </p>
<p>The service academics are good places for this kind of study because the student bodies are controlled, the curricula are controlled (hence the departmental exams), and classes are filled by random assignment. Reduces the variation created by things other than the variables of interest.</p>