A PBC reader writes:

Better studies than one department head’s observations have shown a weak but real correlation between grades and student evaluations. But it is not only grades, not by a long shot. It is also how hard or easy the courses are. A lot of students don’t really care whether
they get and A or B, as long as they get their degree. But they care a lot about how hard they have to work.
I have plenty of testimony from other professors, especially in math, about how they’ve gradually watered down their courses (to a certain extent) in response to student “demand.” Part of it is the perceived (and real) need to do well on the student evaluation scores for tenture and promotion. (I’ve seen people get turned down or held up because of the evaluation scores, usually at the administrative level i.e. provost level).

Other points to make regarding student evaluations:

No one is suggesting that student feedback can’t be valuable. It is the weight the evaluations are given in today’s academy, alluded to by the PBC reader above, that is harmful and objectionable.

No one is suggesting a point-for-point direct causality between grade inflation and the evaluations. No one is suggesting that high graders automatically get good evaluations. Many high graders who disappoint in other ways no doubt get poor evaluations, especially since high grades are automatically expected these days, and are not looked on as a bonus. This doesn’t undercut the conviction that on the whole the evaluations contribute to keeping grades inflated and to diminishing course content.

I said in my last post that most liberals favor evaluations, but that does not mean everyone. The left-liberal professor Mark Edmundson has written about his disdain for what his good evaluations actually signify.