The old assertion the student evaluation of Instruction (SEI) causes grade inflation showed up on PhiBetaCons a couple of days ago. There is just not much evidence to support it. I did the correlations during my 15 years as department chair and rarely found a relationship — and when I did, it was pretty weak. Now I can make the numbers sing, so I could find you a relationship if I wanted to, but good analysis showed very little.

Even when there is a weak relationship between SEI scores and grades there is still the issue of causality. When I looked at the information, it made sense. Sometimes the best teachers got higher SEI scores, and the students received higher grades. Isn’t the idea of good teaching that the students learn more?

I’ve seen students give very low SEI scores despite very high grades and vice versa. I have, however, seen some successful charlatans around campus but, by and large, the students are like the voters. They usually get it right.

–Ken Winter