Accountability is something anyone paying for a service should expect.
Higher education is no excuse.
Thanks to House Bill 2504 signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry, it is no longer the exception.
Texas has taken a step forward to increase accountability and transparency. State institutions are now mandated to upload end-of-semester, student evaluations of faculty members to the Internet in a timely manner.
The bill requires by the fall, among other needed steps, end-of-semester student evaluations of faculty members be made available online.
In other words, think of RateMyProfessors.com or PickaProf.com, but through Texas State’s Web site. Unlike these examples, the evaluations posted on the university’s site will be free and provide information on each faculty member.
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved the legislation Oct. 29. The implementation is expected to take two years from that date.
The call could not have come sooner. Evaluations serve as a tool to measure how well faculty members educate students and how capable they are to teach their respective subject. The information obtained through student evaluations that administrators and department chairs are privy to should be seen by students as well. After all, faculty members have one main objective — to teach students and teach them well.
Faculty members work for the students, and thus should be held accountable in the most transparent possible manner. The online reviews will reward faculty members viewed by their students as effective teachers. In return, the online reviews will shed light on faculty believed not to be teaching in the students’ best interests.
The ability to grade one’s teacher comes with an additional responsibility on the part of the student. Individuals have an obligation to complete their faculty members’ evaluations honestly and objectively. A disgruntled student with a vendetta for a particular teacher has the potential to evaluate a faculty member unfairly, but in full view of the public.
Hopefully disgruntled students will be few, and nothing more than outliers in the overall evaluation process.
The University Star takes faculty concerns seriously. A certain loss of professorial control is implicit in an online and freely available database compiled of faculty evaluations submitted instantly and anonymously. Certain vulnerabilities are exposed in the Ivory Towers of academic institutions.
Nevertheless, the passage and signing into law of House Bill 2504 is a victory for accountability, transparency and ease-of-use students expect.