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Take a look at the Prof Sanna's ratings as a teacher: sounds like a real asset to the faculty, right?

Now notice when most of the flattering reviews were posted.

Now look at when Sanna resigned.

You are absolutely correct that Slashdot's readership is a bit older. I fall into that demographic, but feel that I can speak on the subject of lowering college standards.

I believe that the OP is correct, but there are qualifications. Public universities cannot raise tuition and their government funding is being drastically squeezed between the national debt and the small government tea-baggersI mean tea party. Private universities are raising tuition prices and standards.

I attended a top fifteen private university. The standards were very high. Sure there were a few blow-off classes, but the requirements were such that every student had to take some quite rigorous classes. Engineering students could get away with a minimum of writing classes, but they were HARD. Humanities students could get away with a minimum of math and science. They weren't as hard, but were blow off classes either.

I am friends with several current students at my alma mater. The standards have definitely gone up. The average standardized test scores have gone up. Students now have to take clusters, and the rigorousness of the course work has increased.

My (very recently) ex-girlfriend graduated from a public university recently, and I can tell you that the standards have dropped. There is essentially no math requirement. There are majors where one can take 80% blow-off classes, and student services are poor.

Having said that, there are some fantastic professors at her school, and some great classes. If you attend a school with low standards, you can still get a great education. You just need to seek out those classes that have good professors and interest you.

Check out reatemyprofessors.com, but don't just go by the numeric ratings. Read actual comments. Some people rate primarily based on workload; others actually rate the quality of the teching.

Here's his ratemyprofs' review, FWIW. See if you can figure out which student was probably a lazy ass who didn't like the fact that he actually had to earn a grade in Randy's class.

Do yourself a favor and look up reviews for your profs before you sign up for their class.

Some times there is only one professor that teaches a particular class that is required to graduate, so it doesn't matter if he has good ratings or not you still need to take his class. This is especially true in some smaller universities.

When it comes down to it, it's the prof. If he's a gifted teacher, it will shine through no matter which medium he chooses.

Some of the best profs that I had were active professionally in their fields a few years before I took their classes, and they each had thier own style from "chalk talk" to in-depth discussions and explanations of what was on the PowerPoint.

I went to undergrad from 2002-2006. I had profs who used PowerPoint daily and I learned a ton from them. I had profs who used a "good old chalk talk" and they were awful. When it comes down to it, it's the prof. If he's a gifted teacher, it will shine through no matter which medium he chooses. Do yourself a favor and look up reviews for your profs before you sign up for their class.

Exactly what http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ is for.

They're not talking about Ratemyprofessors.com, are they? That site is indispensable!

Well, I don't think all the comments would be bad. Head over to Rate My Professors if you want to see this kind of think in action. There's plenty of profs who get good ratings. There's also some professors I consider pretty terrible who got a few good ratings. Different people like different things. And there's not much an employer could do to stop ex-employees from posting. There isn't much they could do to stop a current employee from posting. If they kept no data about who posted, then they wouldn't have anything for employers to find out who did the postings. I could see a lot of problems happening with companies posting for themselves to get the ratings up, or posting against rival companies to get the ratings down. I think that this would be the biggest problem to overcome, and not the fact that people would only vote against companies they hated, or not vote at all because they are afraid of retaliation.

When one of my profs talked about it in class he said: "The site said that I was a bitter old man, but I'm not that old!" Awesome prof, by the way.

Not to mention all the review sites that currently exist about things like movies and tv shows.

So, if there is a precedent set where you can bitch about a bad movie, or prof, but not about someone who could very well have your life in their hands, then there might be a more important legal battle than software patents coming up. (well, at least one that concerns me more anyway)

I'm all for sites that allow users to post reviews from either a positve, negative or neutral perspective. It still may not be fair to the person, but at least different sides of the stories can be seen under similar context. (rather than having to go to the forums to see the retort of the accused, compared to just the negative being on the main page)

Then again, I doubt Bill Gates has the time to reply to each and every one of the sites bashing him and his company (/. included)

Nah, you write as many sigfigs (significant figures) as is found in the least accurate information. Otherwise by the same logic 10 + 9 = 20. Like your logic though :)

I have a teacher this semester who doesn't teach sigfigs but expects you to get it right. Then he applies rules like "but with this info, you always show 3 sigfigs, with this info, 2 unless blah blah blah blah blah"... and he says this after marking everyone down in the test, mind you. Good thing I had a High School teacher who taught me this stuff.

His excuse? "You should have asked more questions in class". I swear, he must have expected us to actually ask "how do sigfigs work?" without knowing it would be an issue. Doesn't help that he makes you feel stupid when you ask a question in class.

He's not all bad, but still pretty bad. For more information: click.

Additionally, if you go here you will see legal speak about why it's not illegal to host other peoples' comments no matter how bad they are. To quote the link,
It sounds as though you're familiar with 47 USC Section 230, the federal law that permits many entities to "host" other people's content without being liable for defamation/libel etc. "By its plain language, 230 creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service." Zeran v. AOL, 129 F.3d 327, 330 (4th Cir. 1997).

I never heard of the site in question, but I used a different site which is great. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com I never enrolled in a class without consulting it first and I found it to be VERY helpful! I agree that if teacher eval were published it would help the students but since most universities fail to do so, there must be some other way for students to know what they are getting into BEFORE it ruins their GPA! All too many times in college have I been subjected to taking the SAME EXACT CLASS as one of my friends and he never went to class and got an A and I tried my hardest, went to class everyday, did all the assignments and still only got a B. The reason is NOT because he is just naturally smarter, it is because the professor I had just "didn't" give out A. I find this to be a major failing of our educational instutions. I believe that students taking the same exact class should somehow be treated equally, it is only fair.

Go to ratemyprofessor.com for the same type of service. I use it for picking classes.

Ratemyprofessors.com is a college/university site; ratemyteachers is for high school.

There's a similar web site called RateMyTeachers.com that lets you rate high school teachers (its sister site, RateMyProfessors.com, offers the same service for college profs). I've been teaching high school for 5 1/2 years now, and after my sister emailed me a link to the ratings site, I immediately told my students that hang out in my classroom during lunch to go to the site and say the meanest, most ridiculous things about me possible. Why? Simply to prove the point that if students who like me can say awful, untrue things about me and have them published on the internet, then it's impossible to take those reviews any more seriously than a slashdot poll.

Now, as a professional educator, I value feedback and constructive criticism (it's a fundamental basis of education, so if it's good enough for our students, then why not the teachers?), but like any feedback, it needs to be accompanied with sufficient explanation and some degree of trust. Unfortunately, there's no incentive for anyone to be constructive or even honest on sites that allow anonymous ratings. Sure, you might be able to get an overall view of how students liked or disliked a teacher or professor, but giving them a numerical rating from 1.0 to 5.0 is as useful as basing a person's abilities solely on their SAT, ACT or IQ test score.

If a student really wants to have an effect on a teacher, they should go and talk to them about the problems they were having or make some friendly suggestions. Is this going to work on every teacher? Absolutely not - teachers can be some of the most egotistical and defensive people, and there are some you simply can't reach. (You should see teachers react to having other teachers come into their classroom for peer review - you can almost see their skin crawl.) However, I've found some of the negative comments I received about my teaching, especially early on when I was student teaching, which was such a bad experience that I considered not going into teaching at all, and from students who try but are still struggling, are some of the most helpful when I try to improve my teaching abilities.

However, I simply don't think online, anonymous reviews do anyone any good any more than high-stakes testing helps schools or students improve. The only way to improve a professor or teacher is to try to approach them about their shortcomings, and if that doesn't work (which really wouldn't be surprising), then switch classes and take someone you can enjoy, or suffer through it and hope the class goes quickly.

ratemyprofessors.com

So kids, the moral of the story... Don't think with your dick. Someone should have told this TA at the University of Iowa that. The Daily Iowan reported that former UI teaching assistant Frederick Richard "Dick" Williams forced her to watch him mastrubate after telling him that she "would do anything to get a better grade in the class in which she was struggling but was required to pass for her nursing major."

He gave her the option of a "two-minute plan" where she would sit next to a naked Williams and touch his penis or a "five minute plan" where he would sit naked, but further away from her while she watched him touch himself.

"He had his arm around my chair, and he kept asking me if I'd ever seen this before," she said. "He then put my hand on his penis and told me to squeeze," she said, adding that he ejaculated into her hand and a handkerchief. "I told him that was disgusting, and he said, 'I'm sorry' and that he didn't want to take my virginity."

Thomas' defense denies that the alleged event ever happened.

However, anonymous sources have reported that the woman's grade was raised to a "C Mynuts."

One of my CS teachers said they were doing this in order to block professor ratings sites like RateMyProfessors.com