Fifteen years ago, Omega University implemented a new procedure that encouraged students to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of all their professors. Since that time, Omega professors have begun to assign higher grades in their classes, and overall student grade averages at omega have risen by 30 percent. Potential employers, looking at this dramatic rise in grades, believe that grades at Omega are inflated and do not accurately reflect student achievement; as a result, Omega graduates have not been as successful at getting jobs as have graduates from nearby Alpha University. To enable its graduates to secure better jobs, Omega University should terminate student evaluation of professors.
The author of the following argument implies that the student evaluation process should be discontinued so that more students get jobs. The obvious weakness of this argument is that the author isn’t telling us more about how students get jobs in the college. That could be the missing key to the puzzle.
Fifteen years ago, Omega University decided to start a rigorous feedback system for the faculty in order to improve its student’s performance in academics. The results of this action were clearly visible. The major problem happened after that. Potential employers couldn’t agree to the grades of students and as a result the proportion of students getting jobs reduced compared to the universities nearby.
This situation could have two implications. First, it could be the university management which didn’t look how its students are trained for job seeking. If the university did improve its student’s performances, it should have also ensured that it could remove doubts from the companies coming for job recruitments or it could have brought new reforms into its existing student training wing. Second, it could be the companies which did not see potential in either the students or the university. The companies should have done their homework before coming to the university and seen how the management took steps to improve the grades of the students.
The very idea that the “professor evaluation by students” process be removed is not the right approach to tackling this problem. An aggregate survey should be conducted to study the student training processes of other universities which have a good track record of students getting jobs and a similar system should be introduced here. This solution among others, can definitely assure incoming companies of good recruitments and also raise the image of the university.
Lastly, Omega University should strongly continue its professor evaluation procedure in order to ensure better grades of students irrespective of job recruitments of its students.