TEACHER EVALUATIONS - Some numbers don't add up.

When the spring term ends, college students throughout the country will fill out teaching-evaluation forms on which they rate numerically the degree to which their instructors "knew the material," followed the syllabus, graded them "fairly," showed "concern," etc. Then administrators will crunch the numbers and use them-along with material about scholarship and service-to decide about instructors' pay raises, retention, tenure, and promotion. On a growing number of campuses, these forms are the only method used to evaluate teaching-with some departments boiling the whole thing down to the "Overall Effectiveness" number.

Although the weight given to the data varies across departments and colleges, the numbers affect-positively or negatively and to one extent or other-an instructor's career from start to finish.

What could be wrong with asking students to help identify who should be rewarded for teaching and who shouldn't? Plenty. The administrative use of these numerical evaluation forms creates an incentive for instructors to do the wrong thing: to please students instead of teaching them. The use of such evaluations to reward and punish instructors is doing more to dumb down college education than any other policy or practice on campus.

The dynamic is brutally simple. Instructors-fallible and incentive- driven like everybody outside a Trappist monastery-try to get high scores on evaluations to compete for perks such as a decent raise in pay. To earn high scores, instructors must give students what they want. And what a lot of students want nowadays are stress-free classes, "understanding" instructors, easy-to-get high grades, and undemanding workloads-in essence, "education lite."

This may sound like "student-bashing," so let me quote a few comments that students themselves made on narrative evaluations used in my department (sic omitted throughout): "We were bombarded with information about authors that was boring with fact"; "who gives a damn if we call it elegy or loss? Are these terms used elsewhere in lit? I've never heard of them"; "it is really hard to come to class when every day the material is being shoved down your throat"; "it is unfair to drop someone's grade because he/she missed too many days"; "I feel that he, along with every other English teacher, feels that his class is the only one and give too many books to read....Lets try to cut back shall we?"; "eight books per semester is too much to learn and retain. Six would be a more comfortable amount"; "maybe fewer books or smaller books would be better"; "could cover a little less information"; "the instructor needs to lower her standards"; "ease down on exam grading"; "I also think 2 novels to read outside of class is a bit too much. It's hard enough to get through 1"; "she should have more concern for her students, their stress levels, and their GPA's!"; "this course helped and I got a lot out of it but I feel that the professors expectations of us were too high. He didn't give much leniency toward what we wrote or toward our grades." On and on, course after course, year after year. Not quite Mr. Holland's Opus, is it?

To be fair, some students want challenging instructors and courses. But more and more do not. According to the annual survey conducted at UCLA by the Higher Education Research Institute, 40 percent of those entering college each year are "disengaged" from academic pursuits, a polite way of saying they are disaffected with and alienated from the educational process.

Okay, so a lot of students don't want to study. Why can't instructors earn high evaluation numbers by helping those who do? Because good students-happy to get an easy A and to have more study time-seldom give low numbers to instructors who dumb-down courses. And because even a few disengaged students-angry about a demanding workload-can have a disproportionate and devastating impact on evaluation scores simply by giving an instructor zero on each item. On narrative forms, student resentment is often naked, easy to detect and evaluate. But on numerical forms, hostility is camouflaged by ostensibly "objective" numbers.

With careers and raises often hanging in the balance, few instructors can afford to displease the growing number of disengaged students making evaluation forms. Even Mark Edmundson, a well-paid, tenured full professor at the University of Virginia, "complied" with student demands for "entertainment" and for a "comfortable, less challenging" classroom," and "reaped the rewards" on evaluation day (Harper's, September 1997). If he succumbed, what sort of resistance can be expected from those trying to reach $50,000 before retiring?

In Generation X Goes to College (1996), Peter Sacks, a successful journalist who took up teaching at a community college, explained with harrowing honesty how the threat of not being given tenure because of low evaluation numbers induced him to lower standards and workloads "to appease unmotivated, acutely passive students."

Although even tenured professors can be influenced by the economic and psychological pressures of student evaluations, untenured instructors and adjuncts who work on yearly contracts are the most vulnerable. Students know the score. I once heard a student telling friends to take courses from adjuncts because they have to give out lots of A's to keep their jobs. A few years ago an untenured faculty member in the sciences told me that after receiving low scores on his evaluations, he consciously made his course easier the next semester. "I watered it down. I did. If I weren't afraid of these teaching evaluations, I would have done it differently."

Andrei Toom, an adjunct math instructor from Russia, confessed in a scholarly journal that when students complained about his high standards, he backed off: "I could not afford to care about my students because I had to care about my safety from their complaints." "The less you teach," he advised colleagues, "the less trouble you will have from students and administrators." Expect standards to decline even more as part-timers play a greater role in undergraduate instruction.

Do I exaggerate the negative effects? I don't think so. Back in 1980, James Ryan ("Student Evaluation: The Faculty Responds," Research in Higher Education) did the only study I've uncovered of how a mandatory numerical-evaluation program affected the rigor of classroom instruction on one campus. The findings of this rarely discussed study provided a warning that went unheeded. Ryan found that 22 percent of instructors admitted to reducing the amount of material covered (7 percent increased it), and almost 40 percent admitted to making courses and exams easier (9 percent said they made them harder). He concluded that the administrative use of numerical evaluations had "more adverse than positive effects on faculty instructional performance."

Note that the percentages in Ryan's study represent instructors who were aware of changing their teaching patterns. But how many others-by using multiple-choice tests instead of essays, by choosing fewer or less-difficult texts, by assigning fewer papers, by not requiring attendance, by having a lenient grading system-lowered standards without acknowledging it even to themselves? No wonder a later Carnegie Foundation study (1985) found that 67 percent of professors reported "a widespread lowering of standards in American higher education."

Although others inside the academy also think that the use of numerical forms to reward and punish faculty has led to a decline of rigor and standards, don't expect colleges and universities to rid themselves of this deeply entrenched practice voluntarily. Yes, there are other, less-noxious ways to assess and improve the quality of classroom instruction, but too many campus interests are invested in the status quo. If this Trojan horse is ever to be dismantled, the hammering must be done by those outside the academy-by taxpayers, parents, legislators, and alumni alarmed that many of our college graduates seem to have attended Father Guido Sarducci's "five-minute university."

Paul Trout is a professor of English at Montana State University.