Monthly Archives: July 2008

This came out July 11 in The New York Times, “High Cost of Driving Ignites Online Class Boom.”  A quote:

The vast majority of the nation’s 15 million college students — at least 79 percent — live off campus, and with gas prices above $4 a gallon, many are seeking to cut commuting costs by studying online. Colleges from Massachusetts and Florida to Texas to Oregon have reported significant online enrollment increases for summer sessions, with student numbers in some cases 50 percent or 100 percent higher than last year. Although some four-year institutions with large online programs — like the University of Massachusetts and Villanova — have experienced these increases, the greatest surges have been registered at two-year community colleges, where most students are commuters, many support families and few can absorb large new expenditures for fuel.

Inside Higher Ed had an article in it this week titled “Evaluating Faculty Quality, Randomly.”  It’s reporting on a long-term study done at the Air Force Academy by the National Bureau of Economic Research about student evaluations.  There’s a link to the study in the article, but I frankly barely understand the description of the study here, so the article probably wouldn’t make sense to me.  I do understand this though:

One of the major points of the study was its look at the effectiveness of student evaluations. Although the evaluations can accurately predict the performance of the student in the “contemporaneous” course — the course in which the professor teaches the student — they are “very poor” predictors of the performance of a professor’s students in later, follow-up courses. Because many universities use student evaluations as a factor in decisions of promotion and tenure, this “draws into question how one should measure professor quality,” according to the report.

“It appears students reward getting higher grades,” Carrell said.

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