In 1926, the staff of the Harvard Crimson published The Confidential Guide of College Courses. A group of intrepid newspaper writers critiqued 40 or so courses and compiled a small guidebook for their fellow students. The reception was overwhelmingly positive, but the editors soon realized that publishing their personal thoughts about courses was short-sighted and time-consuming. So they reached out to their classmates and called for independent evaluations of professors, written by students, for students.
On May 19, 1926, they wrote a lengthy editorial in the newspaper calling for submissions that "can be of any length and as laudatory or deprecatory, abstract or specific as the individual author may desire." And so grew the world's first independent evaluation system for professors.
Since its creation, the "Confi Guide" has evolved to become Harvard's tongue-and-cheek window into academic life. It features witty course evaluations alongside rants about the Core curriculum and cartoons next to information about libraries and freshman seminars. It lets you know whether a certain course's "work load is going to cut a hole in your love life," and its editors argue that "it's like having 100 upperclassman advisers."
There's an upside for faculty and administrators as well: As one official told the Harvard Crimson, the Guide is one of his most "important bureaucratic weapons." He is able to quote "selected juicy passages from the current Confidential Guide at appropriate moments, and then- ask the rhetorical question: 'We don't want to read this again next year, do we?'" For a measly two dollars, anyone on campus can get a detailed description of a professor's classroom personality.
In the preamble to the very first "Confi-Guide," the editors support its creation by writing, "In the past, discussion of the merits and defects of college courses had been altogether too meagre [sic] to be of any value either to instructors or prospective students."
This is a problem we have seen all too vividly at Duke. The debate over the current ACES system has occasioned a variety of responses from students, administrators and faculty, with the ultimate conclusion that discussion about courses at Duke is "too meagre" to be of any value to anyone.
The trouble with the current system is that it is neither fair nor fruitful. Despite the admirable efforts of Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences George McLendon, the faculty are still allowed to hide their numbers from students. Even if they opt-in, which only about 10 percent do, students are left with a somewhat arbitrary numerical appraisal-useful, perhaps, for tenure review but not made for choosing classes. The valuable written comments on evaluation forms never see the light of day.
And so we take matters into our own hands. A new system, designed by Duke's watchful gadfly Elliott Wolf (who is a Chronicle columnist), is a step in the right direction. (See http://evals.dorm.duke.edu) For one thing, its leaves no opt-in or opt-out choice. Additionally, it features written evaluations-both laudatory and deprecatory-so that students have a better sense of a professor's classroom style.
But there are two difficulties with such a system. The first is simple collective-action failure. It could die for lack of interest. And if too few students participate, then the only available information is from students at the margins who either love or hate their professors. The other difficulty is that such information poses a credible threat to non-tenured faculty who fear that fringe comments may affect their future employment prospects.
We need a system that is independent enough to publish critical reviews but also institutionalized enough to have full student participation. Harvard has negotiated this compromise with the CUE Guide to courses (yes, they have two guides). It is written and edited by students but paid for by the faculty council. The faculty have some oversight, but the staff are protected from too much administrative interference. All students participate, the editors are political about their word choice and the guide is available all over campus.
We're not too far from such a solution. Students should continue using Wolf's new evaluation system for the time being, both because it serves our purpose and because it has the potential to grow into our version of the Confi Guide. But that doesn't leave faculty off the hook.
At a university of Duke's caliber, it's hardly inappropriate to ask for an evaluation system that fairly and publicly gauges undergraduate instruction. At the very least, two such systems will allow us to give the 'Duke of the North' a run for its money.
Jimmy Soni is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Tuesday.
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