The Sacramento Bee: Web site reveals professors’ grading
Web sites that allow college students to anonymously evaluate their professors — slamming them as buffoons or rating them as ”hot” — have grown in popularity in recent years.
Now, a unique site called PickProf, which also posts the numbers of A’s through F’s given out in individual classes, is breaking into the California market of more than 2.3 million public university and college students.
The for-profit company prevailed recently in a public-records lawsuit against the University of California-Davis that was seen as a test case in California. (The school initially refused to hand over the letter-grade information, then backed down and paid PickProf $15,000 in legal fees.)
Now the company is seeking the distribution of grades at other University of California schools, the California State University system and the state’s community colleges — to the ire of faculty members who say students will shop for easy classes.
The Daily Bruin: Class ratings may go public
The results of the university-distributed professor evaluations could potentially be made available to students within the upcoming academic year.
The numerical data from the end-of-quarter professor evaluations are at the center of a proposal currently in the works by Marwa Kaisey, president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council.
According to the Daily Bruin archives, professor evaluations were available in booklets published by the Office of Instructional Development until 1995. The booklets were discontinued because of high printing costs.
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