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December 7, 2007 > Opinion > Course evaluations should be taken seriously

Course evaluations should be taken seriously

By The Rice Thresher Editorial Staff | Thresher Editorial Staff

Students will have until Jan. 4 to evaluate their professors and classes via ESTHER, but we hope that everyone will do that long before then. Like last year, the Office of the Registrar is holding prize drawings for students who complete evaluations, but this should not be the primary stimulus. Neither should the fact that students will be able to see their peers’ evaluations come spring be that big of an incentive. Sure, this breakthrough came after years of lobbying by students, granting students some insight into the courses they are taking and showing just what it was that the administration was so desperate to see. It can be fun to write humorous evaluations, bad-mouthing poor professors or praising the best, but again, we are not doing this for our entertainment.Rather, the purpose of the course and professor evaluations is to provide student perspectives and quantifiable data when professors are assessed for tenure. So while whimsical ratings may be good procrastination fodder and winning a Wii may fun, when filling out your evaluations students should remember that their responses can have long term effects within the university. more thorough and descriptive student responses are, the more seriously they will be taken, and can only benefit from greater student influence in the tenure process. So, if you really like or hate a professor, a well-articulated response will have a much better effect than a noun, a verb and an expletive.

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