Bob Tomaszewski
Staff Writer
Some students use ratemyprofessor.com as a method to choose between professors as they narrow down their schedules. The concept is similar to website glassdoor.com, where employees of a company anonymously reveal the inner workings of their place of employment. Often prospective employees with multiple job offers will use glassdoor.com to help narrow their decision down based on work environment.
Glassdoor.com and ratemyprofessor.com are not without their downfalls; many of them are anonymous and a single person could make multiple positive or negative reviews.
One mathematics professor who points out some of the problems with this type of site is Neil Nicholson, who revealed his thoughts about his profile and the website itself.
“I went and I looked at it, and it reaffirmed my beliefs as to what it is,” said Nicholson.
“Academically,” he said, “it’s useless information. I can’t gain anything professionally by looking at it.”
In some cases, it is flawed because those who would rate professors in the midrange scores, and perhaps provide the most useful feedback, have the least incentive to do so.
“If you’re walking in downtown Naperville and someone hands you a political survey, the people who are ho-hum about the topic are not going to take the time to do it,” said Nicholson.
In statistical terms, Nicholson calls this a “bimodal distribution.”
Interview conducted by Bob Tomaszewski. Video produced by Chris Carracher
“The middle-of-the-road people who probably give us the most useful information, ‘what can you do to be a better teacher,’ there is zero of that,” Nicholson emphasizes.
This is evident in looking at not only Nicholson’s profile, but also professor Al Carius, as much of Carius’ reviews are not constructive. His feedback was all positive.
Commenting on his reviews, Carius revealed he had similar feelings toward a psychology professor that he had at the University of Illinois, calling him “one of the finest teachers I’ve ever had.”
“Once I took one course with him I wanted to take as many classes as I could,” said Carius.
One controversial feature of the “rate my professor” website is the addition of the chili pepper icon that shows whether or not the average reviewer finds that particular professor “attractive.”
“If people have something that they are upset about, then that is a whole other matter, but if people have ways to constructively give you feedback about how you can improve, I think that it is a very valuable tool in life,” Carius said.
When evaluating his own profile, Nicholson said, “As academics, we always look at the negative things,” referring to class evaluations.
“The two negative comments were clearly written by the same person,” he said, pointing out that someone could fill out numerous reports, if they wanted to.
Overall he calls the information “biased and not a good statistic to use.”
“In terms of figuring out what professor to take, I think the best way to determine what professor is just to talk to people,” said Nicholson.
