Reviews can seem more hating than rating

The web is awash with sites that permit consumers to rate the performance of those providing products or services.

RateMyAgent can help if you are looking to sell or buy a property, Rate My Rental if you are looking for somewhere to live, Rate Your Recruiters if you are seeking a job, and Rate My Tradie if you need a painter, plumber or electrician.

Much to the chagrin of many university leaders there is also Rate My Professors, where students can leave reviews on academics they have had a class with. The site boasts more than 19 million student-generated comments and ratings of more than 1.7 million professors at 7,500 universities and colleges around the world.

Rate My Professors is one of several academic review site–alongside Rate My Teachers, StudentVIP, Uloop and University Reviews–that purport to offer students advice on the quality of teaching (including individual teachers) in universities across the world.

Sites like Rate My Professors argue their end game is to help lift the standard of teaching in universities by enabling students to anonymously offer feedback on their experiences with particular lecturers.

With more and more students heading online to post their thoughts, the question increasingly being asked is whether website reviews are having a positive impact on teaching.

In February, Business News revealed growing concern among university leaders that their own internal evaluations were being used as a platform to launch offensive, defamatory, racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments against academic staff.

While such evaluation comments cause academics stress and anxiety, posting unsavoury remarks on publicly accessible websites for all to see represents an escalation of the threat to those individuals’ wellbeing.

Public humiliation of academics will never enhance teaching capability in universities. It is more likely to kill off enthusiasm for teaching and, in some situations, drive talented academics out of the higher education sector.

An inspection of exactly what is posted on review sites exposes the full extent of the problem.

One disgruntled student described their intense dislike for a particular professor by writing that: “I never wore my seatbelt while driving to [university] because I wanted to die before making it to his class”.

Another expressed their displeasure by writing they had “no qualms placing [him] in the same category as Pol Pot and Mussolini”, adding that the professor “regularly disrespects his students and violates their rights”.

If that is not harsh enough, one student wrote they would “rather go to jail again than take this class”.

One student warned to be “sure [you] bring a Bible and a hate-spewing, God-fearing mindset” to a professor’s class, describing the academic as “an arrogant, unhelpful, stubborn man” who was “by far the worst teacher I have ever had in all my life”.

Perhaps even more disturbing was the review that asked readers: “Does anyone need a slutty costume idea for Halloween? Just dress up like Professor [name included but removed here], she’s hardly covered anything this semester!”

To be fair, not all reviews try to name and shame unsuspecting academics.

Yet many comments are clearly illustrative of unhappy students taking full advantage of the opportunity to dish up vitriol under the cloak of anonymity.

Sites like Rate My Professors do not have a positive impact on teaching and learning within higher education.

To the contrary, many comments that appear on these kinds of review websites are counterproductive to the purported intent of enhancing the quality and standards of teaching and learning. 

Comments tend to be based more on some form of likeability. The more students appear to like academics, the higher they rate their teaching, and vice versa.

While we should not dismiss the student perspective when considering how to enhance university teaching and learning standards, we need to reconsider the way we view material from sites like Rate My Professors.

We should use student feedback sites to identify the broad challenges within the higher education system and avoid (at all costs) a shoot-the-messenger approach whereby individual academics are singled out and humiliated. 

• Professor Gary Martin is chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Management WA