Editorial: Evaluations seem shady

Just about everybody has felt they spent money foolishly.

It sounds a bit like Marshall University could feel the same way about teacher evaluations.

Mike McGuffey, director of institutional research, said in a Page-One story of today's Parthenon that Marshall paid nearly $1,000 for the current evaluations in use.

They're the ones you receive sometime before or during the last week of class. The teacher leaves the room and you fill in bubbles in response to questions about the professor's knowledge and capabilities.

As students, we've all probably seen the people who fill in the bubbles at random, without reading the questions, just to get out of class a few minutes early. That gives a pretty sure idea of the accuracy of the evaluations. But what about their worth?

Dr. Lynn Rigsbee, professor of political science, said the evaluations are obscure. The lack of course-specific questions on institutional pressure to standardize, takes blame in Rigsbee's eyes ...

"There are faculty who simply throw them away," said Donna Donathan, Faculty Senatepresident. "I look at mine, but I would like them to be more applicable to class matter."

Professors may learn about what students thought of a particular semester, but it sounds like the trash can is as good a place than any for the current evaluations. If the formats were changed to mainly a comment-style, maybe the benefits would be stronger.

Better yet, we'd really get somewhere if the evaluations were made public as Brandi Jacobs, Student Government Association president, has struck on time and time again.

We say don't waste time and money on something so useless.