Student evaluations are released. Numbers appear. Comments follow. And those numbers, often treated as objective measures of teaching, quietly shape how faculty are evaluated, promoted, and retained.
As a Black woman faculty member, I have come to recognize that what is being measured in these evaluations is not always what we think it is. In my own evaluations, I have been described as “sassy,” “cold,” “angry,” and “unapproachable,” even in semesters when students praised my clarity, organization, and deep commitment to their learning. Those contradictions are not incidental. They reveal something fundamental about what student evaluations capture, and what they miss.
Student evaluations of teaching remain one of the most influential tools in higher education. They are embedded in annual reviews, tenure and promotion files, merit pay decisions, and even teaching assignments. They are easy to administer, inexpensive, and produce clean numerical scores that can be quickly compared across faculty. On the surface, they appear to offer a fair and standardized way to assess teaching quality.
But that appearance is misleading.
We have known for decades that student evaluations are influenced by far more than what happens in the classroom. Course difficulty, grading expectations, class size, and even the time of day a course is taught can shape how students respond. More concerning, gender and racial bias consistently influence how students perceive instructors. Faculty who do not align with traditional expectations of authority, warmth, or demeanor, particularly women and faculty of color, often receive lower evaluations regardless of how effectively they teach.
This disconnect between perception and performance is where the problem begins. When evaluation systems fail to distinguish between how students feel about an instructor and what they actually learn, they risk rewarding likability over learning. Over time, this can subtly shift teaching practices themselves, encouraging faculty to prioritize student satisfaction in ways that may not always align with rigorous or transformative education.
Despite this, student evaluations continue to carry disproportionate weight in high-stakes decisions.
Why?
Because they are convenient.
Student evaluations solve a logistical problem for institutions. They provide a standardized, quantifiable metric that can be easily inserted into evaluation systems. They create the appearance of fairness because every instructor is evaluated using the same instrument. And they require far less time and expertise to interpret than more meaningful measures of teaching, such as peer observation, curriculum review, or direct evidence of student learning.
And in higher education, what is convenient too often becomes what counts.
Over time, I have come to understand this as a form of measurement substitution: what is easy to quantify replaces what is more valid but more complex to assess. Instead of investing in richer, more accurate ways of evaluating teaching, institutions rely on what is readily available and easily comparable.
The consequences of this substitution are not abstract. They are deeply personal and professionally significant. A small number of coded comments, about tone, personality, or “approachability,” can be elevated into evidence about professionalism, collegiality, or fit. In annual reviews and promotion discussions, these interpretations can carry weight far beyond their origin, even when they reflect bias rather than instructional quality.
In my own experience, a handful of comments can stand in for an entire semester of teaching. They can overshadow carefully designed coursework, hours of student mentoring, and measurable evidence of student learning. And once those comments are documented in evaluation systems, they take on a life of their own, shaping how others perceive you as an educator.
This dynamic can subtly reshape how faculty choose to teach. Faculty may begin to anticipate how they will be perceived rather than focusing solely on how they teach. They may soften feedback, reduce rigor, or avoid challenging conversations out of concern for how those choices will be reflected in evaluations. In this way, evaluation systems do not just measure teaching; they shape it.
This is not simply a flaw in measurement. It is a policy choice.
Higher education institutions have decided, often implicitly, to prioritize efficiency, comparability, and documentation in their evaluation systems. Student evaluations fit neatly into that framework. They produce numbers that can be averaged, ranked, and reported across departments, reported in summary form, and inserted into annual merit systems. They offer a defensible, if imperfect, metric in administrative processes that demand consistency.
But in doing so, institutions have extended the use of student evaluations far beyond what the evidence supports.
The result is a system in which a limited feedback tool is treated as a primary indicator of teaching effectiveness. A system in which perception is often conflated with performance. And a system in which bias can be quietly translated into institutional judgment.
These patterns do not just evaluate faculty; they shape careers.
They influence who is seen as an effective teacher, who is considered promotable, and who is viewed as a “good fit” within a department or institution. Over time, they can reinforce existing inequities, particularly for faculty whose identities already place them at the margins of traditional academic norms.
This is why the conversation about student evaluations cannot stop at whether they are biased. That question has been asked and answered many times.
The more important question is why we continue to rely on them so heavily, and what we are willing to do differently.
There is another way.
Student feedback should remain part of how we understand teaching. Students offer valuable insight into their experiences, and their perspectives matter. But student evaluations should be one source of evidence among many, not the dominant metric that outweighs all others.
Institutions can take concrete steps now to move toward a more equitable system. They can reduce the formal weight assigned to student evaluations in annual review and promotion processes. They can require the inclusion of small teaching portfolios that provide context, including syllabi, assignments, and evidence of student learning. They can train evaluators to recognize biased language in student comments and to interpret those comments with appropriate caution.
They can incorporate structured peer review processes that evaluate pedagogy more directly. And they can revise policies so that a small number of negative or hostile evaluations cannot disproportionately influence career outcomes.
Equally important, institutions must be transparent about how evaluations are used. Faculty should not have to guess how student feedback will be interpreted or weighted. Clear guidelines can reduce ambiguity and help ensure that evaluations are used consistently and fairly.
These are not radical changes. They are practical adjustments that align evaluation practices with what we already know about teaching and learning. More importantly, they signal a shift in values.
They signal that institutions are willing to prioritize validity over convenience, context over simplicity, and equity over tradition.
The question is not whether student evaluations should exist.
It is why we continue to trust them so heavily, and what that trust says about our priorities.
If higher education is serious about equity and evidence-based practice, then we need to confront an uncomfortable truth: the systems we rely on to evaluate teaching may be undermining the very values we claim to uphold.
And once we recognize that, the responsibility to change them becomes impossible to ignore.
Cherie Cofield, Ph.D., RN, is an Assistant Professor in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where she teaches and mentors undergraduate and graduate nursing students. Dr. Cofield has authored eight peer-reviewed publications, and is a four-time co-author, including one book that reached the Amazon best-sellers list. A first-generation college graduate, she is deeply committed to advancing sickle cell disease awareness and improving equitable pain management and health outcomes for underserved populations.
Email: [email protected]
