A German teacher sued an Internet site where students can rate their teachers, on the grounds that her career had been hurt, and lost.

It’s been less than two years since I graduated from college, and the memories of bad and good teachers are still fresh in my mind. I am thankful to say that the University of Washington provided me with a number of great teachers (many of whom, however, were actually graduate students), but I must admit that some of my instructors were self-serving and truly horrible teachers. I feel that Internet sites that allow students to “rate” their teachers is a very positive thing, and is long overdue.

If you go to the local mechanic and receive poor service, you can go on Yelp and give that mechanic a poor rating. This will save many other people the inconvenience of receiving poor service, and gives mechanics an added impetus to do good work. We pay to go to college. Even though they often act like it, instructors are not little gods-on-campus that can, once they receive tenure, do whatever they want without repercussions. Teachers must be held accountable for their teaching, and since the schools don’t do it, students must.

In a way, universities are like professional sports teams, and professors are like professional athletes. Universities scout out other schools for the best “talent”–usually a teacher who has published a popular book—and scoop them up. Unlike professional athletes, however, professors are not fired if they cease in their ability to perform. An instructor can be granted tenure, which protects a teacher from being fired, after the teacher has taught at that school for a little while. While many instructors do not abuse their tenure, others do, and I have witnessed this first-hand.

After all the money students pay to go to college, often placing them in debt for years to come (I am still paying off my student loans, two years later), students deserve quality teaching. Just because a professor has a PhD, wrote a good book or has great connections, does not mean that the professor is a good teacher. I can’t count the number of times I had to sit in the very front of the class because the teacher spoke too softly, had to stand the whole class because the class was overbooked, had to hire a tutor because the instructor was confusing, or went days without sleep because the instructor had unrealistic expectations and assigned too much work. I seriously got more out of reading my textbooks, in almost every class I ever took with a few exceptions, than I did from my instructors. Universities have become more of a racket than a place of learning, in my opinion.

And so I embrace anything that holds teachers accountable. If you are in college, enthusiastically participate in sites like RateMyTeachers and RateMyProfessors. Will there be abuses? Yes, just like there are on Yelp and anywhere else where any person has unmoderated access to a service. But the more people use it, the more reliable it gets, just like a 5-star product with 50 reviews on Amazon.com is more reliable than one with one review. Teachers, instead of suing to keep your students from rating your performance poorly, maybe, just maybe, teach better.

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