Letters to the Editor: Rate My Professors story was 'irresponsible journalism'

To the editor: I’m writing in response to your article “Think your professor sucks? See if the data backs you up.”

As an AFAB, gender non-conforming professor who teaches everything from statistics to conflict studies, I am aghast at the blatant disregard for gender and racial biases that affect professor ratings, particularly when those immutable qualities intersect with course difficulty.

Female professors are systematically penalized at greater rates than their male counterparts in across the board, and this effect is amplified 1) when courses are difficult, and 2) when the professor in question is non-white (even if they are still male).

Even in your top 20, only three professors are women, even though women are more likely to engage with pedagogical training. This severe of an oversight is irresponsible journalism.

Sincerely,

— Sherry Zaks (political science, 3.29, harsh)

To the editor: The more serious story is that many schools at USC still largely evaluate teaching faculty based on their end-of-semester course evaluation scores, which have just as much bias as Rate My Professors does including course difficulty, racial, and gender biases.

This means that whether or not a teaching faculty gets a raise or has their contract renewed can be based on similarly flawed metrics.

It’s also not standardized across the university. Different schools and in some cases different departments within the same school weigh course evaluations differently.

— Sanjay Madhav (technology and applied computing, 4.62, informative)

To the editor: Thanks for your article about all of the USC professors' rankings on Rate My Professors.

I just wanted to point out that my Rate My Professors account is listed under "USC Marshall" rather than "University of Southern California." I believe I would have been in 1st or 2nd place if I was included on your list!

Please do not think I am "aura farming" whatsoever. I just wanted to make you aware of this circumstance as I am sure there are other professors in the same situation from other disciplines. Thanks again for your work on this and fight on!

— Nik Lewis (management and organization, 4.86)

To the editor: Nice work creating the MT, good to see some of the more fascinating happenings at our university!

Regarding the piece about RMP, why not make a chart of rating versus expected grade? While I have no idea of the correlation of expected with received grade, this relation, and the general topic of grade inflation, is a matter of current interest and concern. It also might serve as a further discriminant to identify the most valued teachers.

— John Vidale (earth sciences, 3.52, accurately termed “mundane” in your summary)

To the editor: Love your work and found this data aggregation and weighting across the university fun and interesting. As I've come to trust your reporting to cover key aspects of an issue, I was disappointed not to see a spread based on gender or racial identity, though I realize those can be difficult to identify all the time.

It's been repeatedly shown that student evaluations replicate broader cultural biases — toward men being consistently more highly rated without evidence that they're better instructors, for instance, and women and faculty of color often get dinged in evaluations, including for things that aren't related to teaching.

It's a problematic aspect of these kind of evaluations that didn't get a mention, and I'd love to see you account for it or acknowledge it in your reporting on this university-wide comparison effort.

All the best,

— Amy Cannon (writing, 4.44, supportive)

Learn about the weighted ratings and AI-determined “vibe” that each professor in this roundup is cited with. Tomo Chien can be reached at [email protected].