If you’re like me, your inbox has recently been flooded with requests from the Provost to participate in evaluative student opinions surveys. Lately, I’ve been invited by Dr. Judy Bonner to participate in the National Survey of Student Engagement. During my four years at UA, I’ve been asked to fill out opinions surveys on just about everything. For the most part, I consider this normal. I expect my opinion on campus amenities to be surveyed by our school’s administration. I am always glad to offer my opinion on Bama Dining, the Student Recreation Center or Crimson Ride, and I appreciate UA’s willingness to hear it. I begin to worry, however, that things might be a bit out-of-whack when I am asked to critique my own professors.
I can’t help but think of what this insistence on student feedback means. We should begin to question the value of a college experience that consists of students grading teachers and not the other way around.
Why do universities survey student opinions in the first place? They want students to be satisfied. Why do administrators care? They want us to stay in school because they want our tuition dollars. This is not a criticism – that money is needed, and funds, among other things, academic programs in which students can take advantage.
I simply mean to acknowledge that the drive for student feedback is a commercial one. Our feedback is used as a gauge of what university students in 2012 want. And if the University gives us what we want – Rec Centers, condominium living with individual bedrooms and a Chick-fil-a in Lloyd Hall – they are more likely to retain the students they already have and attract more. The only problem is that what students want won’t necessarily improve the quality of their education.
Campuses that place too much emphasis on student feedback lose their distinction. They begin to look and feel much like the society that surrounds them. A look at our very own Ferguson Center proves this to be true. One finds fast food restaurants, a Starbucks Coffee and a movie theater. Am I at an institution of higher learning or on a downtown city block?
Our University should be a place where students come to insulate themselves from society, not indulge in it. Universities once educated students by freeing them from youth-dominated popular culture and introducing them to adult ways of conceiving the world. If students are free to lay into teachers on an opinions survey, causing teachers to tread lightly for fear of injuring undergraduate egos, one wonders if this is still the case. It would seem that in addition to greek houses, residence halls and the Strip, kids now rule the classroom too.
This can’t be good, because what we don’t want is a rigorous, challenging curriculum. We want high grades, but don’t necessarily want to work for them. We want the opportunity to pack our résumé, but not at the expense of our down time. A happy student is not necessarily a well-educated one. When universities cater too much to students’ happiness, a school will always fail at accomplishing its primary purpose: developing the minds of its students.
College is the last real holding tank for young people before they are released into society. This is the last time in our lives that we will actually be encouraged to read great books, discuss big ideas and take a long view of things without considering a bottom line. After we graduate, our jobs and domestic lives will crowd out time for intellectual life.
Our professors want us to take full advantage of our time here, but unfortunately, they are being inhibited. They know the difference between what students want and what students need. We need history and literature so that we can view our environment with some perspective; we need science and math to help us navigate an increasingly technical world. But when professors know they face the wrath of students in December and May, they may hesitate before assigning that lengthy text, or providing an honest critique of a paper. When our school emphasizes what students want over what they need, professors have a hard time doing their jobs.
President Witt and Provost Bonner, college shouldn’t be everything students want it to be. It should cut against the grain of what is cool, what is fun, what is trendy and what young people want. Our professors are older and wiser than we are. They have much to teach us. Let them do so without fearing what their teacher approval surveys will look like come semester’s end. If they have to walk such a fine line, then send me a survey to evaluate your own performance, because you should too.
Evan Ward is a senior majoring in history. His column runs weekly on Wednesdays.
