How important is it to you to rate your professor or college instructor? It is important because it’s important for teachers to know how they’re doing and the information is invaluable to college and university administration when they decide to hire or decline to renew their contracts. This applies to visiting professors as well and not just tenured full time faculty. The website Ratemyprofessor.com which is a New York-based company according to the website is one of the largest databases on the Iinternet netting an estimated 6.8 student generated evaluations on over 1 million+ college and university professors. The website has been around since 1999 and currently allows students from the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, and Wales to evaluate professors and instructors to 6000+ schools across the regions they permit student-initiated evaluations with thousands of new entries entered daily. On the FAQ (Frequently asked questions) the site also points out how some teachers actually like the site and some who hate it and find it necessary to shut it down-any teacher who takes offense to evaluations knows they’re not a good teacher. Good teachers are willing to take the feedback and improve areas of their teaching styles to make things better for them and for the students in the classroom. Teachers are human too, but some of them do in fact need to hear feedback so they can work on improving their standards in the classroom. The one beautiful thing is that students can leave evaluations anonymously and the teacher won’t even know who said what since the site protects the privacy of the students since students do have a right to evaluate their professors and instructors. In some cases school administration actually will use information from the site to make decisions surrounding whether to keep or decline a contract renewal to a professor. When the administration listen to students they can make sound choices in who teaches in their institution whether it’s a junior college standing or 4 year college/university standing. You can rate the professors who are pieces of work because they won’t know you said anything since they get so many people who take the same class they’re not going to waste their time trying to find out who said what. Also do the evaluations you get in your classes too because that also helps academic department chairs to make decisions on who they hire and let go in their department pertaining to the professors and instructors. It’s also a good thing because it gives students a chance to speak their mind and to be honest about their thoughts without being academically penalized-meaning professors who flunk students just for the heck of it especially those who are not cheating in classes and actually show up and do the work. Many professors are even unaware that they have some flaws in teaching style which can indicate their time to teach may be up because of the new and fresh faces that are entering the field. It’s also a permanent record so that those teachers who got too many bad evaluations and the school has decline to renew their contract will have a record that follows them regardless of the new institution they apply and teach at. This also makes people aware that students do in fact have rights and exercising them through an evaluation makes some teachers seriously think about that flunking grade they’re about to give to someone who didn’t deserve it because you have some teachers who in fact don’t like students especially the ones who work just as hard and maintain academic integrity and you have those who are passing people who should in fact flunk the course. From experience I had an instructor who in fact flunked me and the grade screwed my GPA up so I couldn’t have honors on my degree, but had I known about the site sooner I would have evaluated this character poorly because he had a group of students who cheated in his class and they came out with As and Bs. It’s the price you pay when you are honest.
Those who are pushing to preserve and protect the rights of college students will benefit using this tool and a site that’s a part of the Ratingz.net system called Ratemyteachers.com which is where students K-12 and their parents can evaluate the teachers jointly. You don’t have to be in college or a university to have student rights you can be in grade, junior high, and high school to have student rights. Some teachers who teach those grades seem to think that students are young and inexperienced to speak up for themselves when strength comes in numbers and some of these teachers could find themselves without a job if the evaluations are reviewed by school administration and is found to be sufficient enough not to risk hiring them. But you as a student do in fact have a right to evaluate your teachers and to speak up because your words will not matter to some teachers, but when you realize a teacher isn’t meeting your expectations in the course you simply let them know by leaving an anonymous evaluation of their performance and let them know what they need to change and hopefully that will reflect when the new class starts people can see some changes. It’s worth it and you won’t regret doing it.