Often, when I get curious about an economist I hear about or who asks me to friend him (I’ll use “him” to stand for “him/her”) on Facebook, I do a Google search and his ratings on “Rate My Professor” show up. So I often go to the ratings to see what students say. I know I’m getting a biased sample for which the particular biases are unknown but, still, it’s some information.
After having done this for over 5 years, I’ve realized something that I should’ve realized much sooner. The raters virtually never discuss anything about what they’ve learned. The typical comment is about what you need to do to get an A or a B: things like go to class, pay close attention, do the readings, don’t do the readings but take good notes, do the homework, etc. What’s missing is anything like: I learned a lot, this class changed my way of thinking, I particularly liked how he treated subject X, etc.
As I said, this is a biased sample. Maybe the only people who go to rate a professor are people who want to give other students tips about how to get grades. But even if that’s what’s going on, it’s telling. And it’s medium to strong evidence for Bryan Caplan’s thesis that higher education is 80 percent about signaling.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Apr 18 2019 at 11:57am
If I may brag, my RMP actually has some of that:
So…you hiring? 😉
David Henderson
Apr 18 2019 at 2:35pm
Well done, Jon. Of course I’m not hiring because I’m retired, but this is really good.
Floccina
Apr 18 2019 at 2:56pm
Seems like a separation between education and testing/grading might be a good thing. If you hire a tutor/coach, you do not want them to blab to the world what a bad student you were, you do even want them to grade you, you just want to learn.
Matthias Görgens
Apr 18 2019 at 10:35pm
A good thing for whom?
For someone who actually cares about learning and also about being able to signal that they learned something, yes.
But that’s not what most of education is about. (See Caplan’s book.) And for signalling conscientiousness and conformity and a bit of intelligence that the current system works well enough.
But especially for signalling conformity, it’s a catch-22 to look for a different, ie non-confirming, way to signal.
Thomas Lee
Apr 19 2019 at 6:42pm
To the extent that “Rate my Professor” could be massaged into a data base, someone could compile the comments and come up with a very useful summary, one that would probably support Byran’s thesis. The most interesting findings would concern the exceptions. You could find out, for example, which schools and departments, really promote learning instead of mere signaling. Also, what are differences between “woke” social justice schools vs. traditional institutions?
David Henderson
Apr 19 2019 at 7:03pm
Good thought. And since it’s “Rate My Professor” and not “Rate My College” or “Rate My Department,” the data are more granular.
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