A Cornell University professor argues that female professors should receive automatic bonus points on their annual student evaluation forms to correct for gender bias.
Sara Pritchard, an associate professor of science and technology studies at Cornell, argues that student evaluations are often slanted by gender bias, and can negatively impact female professors’ opportunities for professional advancement.
“Female faculty should receive an automatic correction — that is to say, a bonus — on their quantitative teaching evaluation scores,” Pritchard writes. “The bonus should be determined by average gender bias in teaching evaluations at their institution or national averages.”
She cites research by Northeastern University professor Benjamin Schmidt, who created an interactive chart using data from 14 million student reviews on RateMyProfessors.com. Users can search for any word to see how often it comes up in reviews, as well as the gender breakdown between male and female professors.
Results find that female faculty are more likely to be described as “approachable,” “helpful,” “nice,” and “bossy,” while male faculty are more often associated with words like “funny,” “brilliant,” “genius,” and “arrogant.”
Pritchard says that female professors are often judged on factors that have nothing to do with their teaching abilities, and that male professors are perceived as smarter overall.
She also cites a study published in the journal Innovative Higher Education that finds college students enrolled in online courses, give higher ratings when they believe a professor is male, even when the professor is actually a female.
Course evaluations are important, Pritchard says. Especially for non-tenured instructors who may not get their contract renewed if they receive low scores.
“[Scores] are incorporated into a number of key employment decisions, including hires, contract renewals and regular reviews such as tenure and promotion,” Pritchard writes.
Pritchard argues that automatically awarding all female faculty bonus points on their evaluations wouldn’t provide an unfair advantage, but would simply “correct for one disadvantage women faculty usually experience.”
