 service industry where the less you give, the happier are your constituents" (Crumbley). When teenagers were asked to describe their WORST teachers, 50 percent choose "expectations too high" (poor knowledge of the subject mattered least!). Although research indicates that students learn more from professors who are demanding task masters, it also shows that students give these task masters lower evaluations (Damron "Instructor"; Sullivan & Sranes 587). William McBroon, a sociologist at the University of Montana, found that when he eased course requirements (dropping attendance and participation obligations), his course evaluations went up. He writes, "as requirements were set aside, evaluations of the content, instructor, and course became more positive." "The less the rigor," he concluded, "the higher the student ratings of content, instructor, and course."
Who can really doubt that lenient standards promote favorable ratings from all those little strugglers sitting in class? Professors know the score: more of them lower standards over their careers than raise them. "While half to two-thirds reported no change in various requirements they had for students, the faculty members who altered their requirements because of the questionnaires were much more likely to decrease than to increase the amount and difficulty of material covered. Specifically, the amount of material covered was reduced by 22 percent of the faculty and expanded by just 7 percent, the the difficulty of course material was lowered by 38 percent of the faculty and raised by only 9 percent. Particularly notable was a finding on the rigor of course examinations: fully 33 percent of the faculty admitted that, as a result of these questionnaires, they lessened the difficulty of their tests; just 6 percent indicated they increased test difficulty" (Barnet, in Damon "Instructor" 12).
So go ahead, do it. No one will catch you because administrators wouldn't dream of correlating your ratings on evaluation forms with truncated reading lists, watered-down objectives, or even inflated grades. All administrators care about are high ratings and satisfied students. Give them both and make them happy!
FLATTER THE POLITICAL BIASES OF STUDENTS!
Stroke the political biases of your students, especially if the evaluation form solicits information about the cultural, racial or gender biases of the instructor or course ("classroom climate" questions). Stanley Coren ("When") contends that when instructors present arguments and evidence on both sides of a controversial issue, such as cognitive differences between the sexes, they seriously endanger their evaluation scores. That's because students, like most people, are vulnerable to the "fundamental attribution error effect," which confuses "is" with "ought." Students think that when an instructor objectively reports the controversial conclusions of scientific research, he or she endorses or likes the findings. Coren discovered that a quarter of the students were apt to interpret the presentation of evidence about the genetic and racial differences in intelligence as motivated by racism, rendering the professor a racist for twenty-five percent of students (14). When the subject of discussion was the cognitive skills of men and women, twenty-six percent deemed the instructor "sexist" and motivated by a desire to put down women, with ninety-four percent of female students thinking this.
Even in law school it is becoming increasingly dangerous to teach controversial material in an even-handed way. Alan Dershowitz writes that a sizable group of law students were offended by his dispassionate examination of the legal issue of rape, and "used the power of their evaluations in an attempt to exact their political revenge for my politically incorrect teaching":
One student said that I do "not deserve to teach at Harvard" because of my "convoluted rape examples." Another argued that women be allowed an "option" not to take my class because I "spent two days talking about false reports of rape," another demanded that my "teaching privilege