Let me tell you how I really feel...

Originally what follows was meant to be a comment on Alex’s blog. But it kind kept growing and I just couldn’t bring myself to post this as a comment.

She was talking about some instructors at her university who were, in effect, offering bribes for good evaluations. She then asked if anyone had any experience with such a thing.

Here’s my answer, along with some stories about my own college experiences.

How does one go about offering a bribe in exchange for a good evaluation?

Ultimately an instructor offering a bribe suggests one of two things to me. Either the instructor is a complete idiot, realizes it, and hopes to keep the students from spreading it around "officially" or he or she just really insecure and mildly paranoid.

Either way I don't believe I would accept a bribe, but it may lead me to go a little easy on them out of pity. Unless it was done in a way that I felt was offensive, in which case I'd have no problems crushing them.

I have no experience with any sort of academic in all of the classes I've taken.

The last few evaluations I've done have been at a community college where I was taking some pre-reqs for the program I'm starting in January.

Both times the instructors conducted a full class and with 5 minutes or so left announced that they were passing out evaluations.

They asked for a volunteer to collect them and handed that person a manila envelope to seal after they were collected.

Then the instructors left the room and we were free to evaluate away.

All in all I there two things I think about evaluations. One is that they seldom ask the right questions and two is that they are never handed out by the instructors who need to be evaluated.

Both of these stories are true and unembellished.

There's only been two times when I wished that I could fill out an evaluation, The first was for a Humanities class. The instructor was a total idiot and really should have retired.

The tests were all true and false and the instructor was fond of telling us that he didn't even know how to write a trick question. And to a certain extent he was telling the truth. But here's an example. He referenced one of his lectures and referred to a photo of a kid being handed a horn to play in a marching band. The image was not on the test, you had to go from memory.

The question was: The boy in the picture was going to play trumpet in the marching band. True or False?

Now I spent several years in marching band and played in college for a while too. I remembered that picture and recalled noticing that the horn was a coronet.

So I asked if he was making a distinction between a trumpet and a coronet and he said yes, of course, they're two very different instruments.

I knew from years and years of playing that in a whole lot of bands coronets and trumpets play from the same music. In the same key. With the exact same fingerings. And if you can play one you can play the other with no changes in proficiency. It's like switching from an electric guitar to an acoustic guitar. The sound might be a little different (barely) but the guy who's playing it won't do a single thing differently.

No trick questions my ass. All his tests were like that. I would have evaluated the crap outta him.

I was so pissed when I walked out of that final that I told my parents if I got less than a B in that class I was going to the Dean.

The second was in a psych class. The instructor there liked to rant about stuff.

One day he came in griping about “kids today” and asked if anyone could tell him why it was that students today didn’t take their academic careers seriously.

And the idiots in my class who had apparently never been yelled at by an annoyed parent tried to answer! One kid said something like “Ummm… peer pressure?” Which of course only led to more ranting.

After about 5 minutes I finally got tired of it an raised my hand. I was a senior at this point and pretty salty. When he called on me I said “Why don’t you tell us? Surely this isn’t a phenomenon that began with people born after 1970!”

He came down the aisle, glowering all the way, stood next to my desk and told me “The only reason I’m standing here today is because I had a 3.X as an undergrad and a 4.0 in my post grad program!”

I replied “That’s great. I have a 3.8 in a business curriculum and I’m being recruited by Fortune 500 companies like Dow Chemical!”.

(OK, so I lied a little there. The truth is that I had done a ride along with a Dow rep a few months earlier as part of a class project.)

But that was enough to stop the rant and get on with the class, which was my goal.

After that I was just irritated by the guy. And if I had been able to evaluate him I would have had some things to say. None of them would have been complimentary.

The last time I checked ratemyprofessor.com that nut was still teaching.

This is one of the reasons that I rather dislike the whole idea of tenure. When accountability is removed wisdom often succumbs to hubris.

Any thoughts?