Students Evaluating Teachers - Cart before the Horse

Students Evaluating Teachers – Cart before the Horse?

“FIFTY YEARS AGO” is a short segment appearing in The Hindu in its Editorial page on a particular day in the past that gives recap of its report on a particular newsworthy event. For the past about ten years this space has become interesting to me. Fifty years ago, I was just coming out of my cocoon (exclusively academic), and I was helped along by events happening in Vietnam (Tet Offensive had happened a few earlier, and I was blissfully unaware). Now, the reader would understand how what happened fifty years ago and how the newspaper reported it became points of interest for me, in my 71st year of living.

On July 23, 1975 I must have been in Bombay undergoing the so-called “practical training” at Chembur plant of the Fertilizer Corporation of India (it was later renamed as the Trombay unit of the Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd. I was staying with my uncle in Sion (E) and travelled by the bus no. 8 Ltd. of BEST (yes, I do remember these details). My uncle−now, I can call him a turncoat Madrasi−subscribed to the Times of India and I could not have read the short report that appeared in the day before yesterday (2025-07-23) in The Hindu in the aforesaid space.

So much for the background for this post (the reader may call it space-filler and I would not protest).  Some academicians at the policy-setting level (including Vice-Chancellors), college principals, and eminent educationists expressed divergent views on the suggestion that “students in autonomous colleges” should evaluate the work of their teachers. This was reported carrying the date line July 23, 1975.

Only recently I completed reading the section on education in Adam Smith’s “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”. He did not seem to endorse the idea of the students evaluating teachers. But, we are not beholden to Adam Smith, are we?

The University Grants Commission organised four workshops (I have attended many such workshops that are only talkathons and only one which indeed was a workshop; how many of my readers know the difference?) from which the following recommendation emerged: “the process of assessment of students should be continuous [it must have meant continual] and they in turn may also evaluate the efficiency of teachers in the teaching-testing-learning processes.” Tut, tut, tut ...

I worked for ten years in a deemed-to-be University for ten years after I was let go by my then employer (to whom I said, in the manner of an exit interview that it was a pity the that company could not find a suitable job for me even though I had proven myself a jack of all trades and a master of a few!). In this university and many other similar universities, I believe it had come to be fashionable, not nearly as useful. I will explain.

One of the reasons, not the main one, is for the university administration elevates the process of feedback into a “weapon by which the merit of a teacher is solely or partly adjudged... ” The door for mischief is left wide open.

Well, I am not going to admit that I would have availed mischief to take revenge against one of my teachers, if only had I been given the opportunity.

I pointed out an error in the teacher’s explanation. In an eighth semester class (two more semesters to go to graduate), I noticed that the teacher took a value for a parameter in a problem from his notes. That value went against a provision in the design code. The teacher took his revenge the next semester (the time lapse did not lessen his antipathy towards me). I would have marked him off at negative infinity had faculty assessment by students was in vogue then; this was not mischief but what the teacher truly deserved.

Since then, I have had many instances in which I had either assessed the faculty or been assessed by the students. It had been a two-way street, no accidents, as all the drivers were safe and sound, and most importantly, honest.

Neither the students nor the faculty members can feel safe−at least as safe as I felt beyond the unsavoury incidence involving my teacher and me−today, in India. The apprehension felt 50 years ago is still valid I can say. No wonder, for a particular test in the deemed-to-be university mentioned at the beginning the average for the class was above 80%!

Raghuram Ekambaram