Campus Reform reports Berkeley Prof Wants to Nix Student Evals After White Male Profs Score Higher.
A University of California, Berkeley professor suggested scrapping end-of-semester student evaluations for hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions after claiming that the grades and evaluations are biased against female instructors and people of color.
“Over the next few weeks, students will get the chance to evaluate their professors and TAs. They’re going to get it wrong,” UC Berkeley history professor Brian DeLay tweeted on Sunday. “They’ll be harder on women and people of color than on white men. Tenured white male faculty, in particular, should help their students understand this.”
Over the next few weeks, students will get the chance to evaluate their professors and TAs. They’re going to get it wrong. They’ll be harder on women and people of color than on white men. Tenured white male faculty, in particular, should help their students understand this. 1/8
— Brian DeLay (@BrianDeLay) November 25, 2018
Thanks to reader CJ for this article.
“I Know Better”
There you have it. Let’s not ask students what they want because “I, Brian DeLay, know the students will get it wrong.“
Bear in mind, this is after constant hounding of students, virtual elimination of freedom of speech on campuses, and the creation of “safe zones” etc., where saying anything against women, people of color, gays, lesbians, transgenders is not tolerated.
I suggest, the students are indeed biased, but in the reverse manner that know-it-alls like Brian DeLay suggest.
For the record, one of the best professors I had in college was Ms. Tong, an Asian lady who taught calculus. I suspect she would have blown away the ratings of the other math teachers.
There was no one in that class who had anything but complete respect for her.
It is the height of arrogance for DeLay to tell students that he knows they are biased and wrong.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
How can he statistically disprove that black men make better athletes in football and basketball. He can’t. A black person’s voice is more robust than a whites person’s voice. Am I a racist for making these quantifying assertions or has God created a beautiful garden where the vegetables are all different but edible… they all contribute different taste to the meal.
I just did “excellent” – Appears to be mostly random except for CS and Engineering.
Can it be that the kids are simply right? Why not?
“The professor is being racist, projecting that students will evaluate a certain way, based on the sex or color of the person being rated.”
Precisely
“both male and female students were much more likely to use the words ‘brilliant’, ‘genius’, ‘funny’ (and others) when evaluating white male professors than anyone else. “
Does that reflect bias based on race or sex? The danger here is that UC hires teachers just to achieve diversity. If they truly are not as good, then the kids will pick up on it, accurately.
What percentage of White male teachers are there? I will make up a number: 62%. If so, on that basis alone one would expect to see more brilliance attributed to white males.
Thinking back to my college engineering degree. I can only name two professors off the top of my head. Ms. Tong – Calculus, Wilson Tang – Statistics. Both Asian, both excellent. Two other teachers were excellent but I cannot recall their names.
Ms. Tong was one of only two female teachers I had in five years. The other was horrid. Worst teacher in 5 years.
To some degree, the history teacher has a point. There is no reason that students couldn’t be biased, it’s not like racism doesn’t exist. Of course, it could just be that on average white male professors are better teachers.
When I taught college my reviews were quite amusing reading. Most students thought I was brilliant and a wonderful teacher, other thought I was a complete waste of space, a few were neutral. I believe that’s true for most professors, more or less.
Well, who was correct? I don’t know. The point is that relying on student evaluations is a pretty iffy proposition and in my limited experience they’re (fortunately) not taken too seriously, other than to polish up teaching techniques when the criticism can be useful.
Is it possible that “average white male professors are better teachers”. Given the law of large numbers, that’s not really possible, unless the people making the hiring decisions applied lower standards in hiring people of other races and gender than they do for white males, AND they actually they have a sound system for evaluating potential hires. You need both to be true.
“Is it possible that […] white male[s…] are better [at something?] Given the law of large numbers, that’s not really possible.”
Do you really think that? That’s the “blankest slate” blank slate dogma I’ve ever seen articulated. Affirmative action BY DESIGN means that those de-selected by it (white males) are apt to be better at each and every activity where AfAct is applied.
If it were reversed, and white women were given “extra points” for obtaining starting-forward positions in the NBA, would you still think that black men were NOT better than white women at starting-forward?
The law of large numbers applies only to homogeneous subsets. From performance on the SAT to performance on the basketball court, humanity is NOT a homogeneous subset. Those who insist on believing it is are scientifically (as in genetic-science) illiterate Cargo Cultists.
Yes, that was the point I was bringing up. If affirmative action results in teachers being hired using lower standards for non-white-males than for while males, it is possible that white males will evaluate higher, but that is only true if the hiring criterion is effective, and teachers that are higher on the hiring criterion are actually better teachers. If the criterion used for hiring is not correlated to teaching ability, then hiring people who score lower shouldn’t matter.
“It’s not like racism doesn’t exist.”
I can’t wait until “all whites are racist” are literally fighting words. The only racism that exists today is racism-fatigue.
When the truth is deemed racist (and today it most certainly is so), it’s time to declare war on those who invoke racism as an excuse for anything.
Modern life bequeathed us video recordings. When you take a tiny moment to surf the video-horrors of what downtrodden minorities to do privileged whites, when you notice that even white people are now claiming to be black (or Native American) to GET THE GIBSMEDATS, BABY, you’ll know that those who invoke “racism” and use the term “white privilege” are enemies of civilization itself.
If you have the stones, peruse this guy’s twitter feed for the videos and imagine if the races were reversed, how we’d see those vids on the Network News for a week. If racism exists, in what direction does the arrow point?
I happen to have a bias against history professors, and economists no matter what the color of the skin. /s
Dear Mr. Shedlock, I appreciate your excellent column, but in this case I think there’s more to this question than you suggest. As an alumna of UC Berkeley, I had a lot of brilliant professors, men and women. Several years ago a colleague of mine, Ben Schmidt, wrote a computer program to analyze the language used in millions of student evaluations of professors on ratemyprofessor.com, and found that both male and female students were much more likely to use the words ‘brilliant’, ‘genius’, ‘funny’ (and others) when evaluating white male professors than anyone else. Should this be accepted face value as evidence that white men in academia are more likely to be funny and brilliant than anyone else? Maybe, I’m not sure.
Interactive keyword search “useless” why does it rate highest in Engineering and Business? Berkeley? lol
Why is it that some people can’t accept that men and women are not the same and there’s variation among the races? They think any observed difference is discrimination bias. Not actual.
End racism in pro football! More white players now!
But Schmidt found that females also were more “likely to use the words ‘brilliant’, ‘genius’, ‘funny’ (and others) when evaluating white male professors than anyone else.” So female students are also biased against female professors?
“Gendered.”
One of the Newspeak Dictionary’s words that immediately inform us that the speaker is a leftist lunatic who believes men can be women by simply announcing it, and if they’re hardcore, they have a surgeon lop off their genitals and use the meat to fashion a crude simulation of female genitalia.
Oh, how I breathlessly await the tide going out on this lunacy so we are able to recognize who was “swimming (intellectually) naked.”
Sanity has a survival benefit most of the time. Only for short periods does insanity (individual or collective) appear adaptive. I think that period is coming to an end.
Starting in 2021, when the dems get back in control, this sort of thing will become normal. The dem constituency will be a collection of groups who will be labelled as discriminated against. I suspect over time the groups will fight among each other over who is more discriminated against.
It’s too early to predict that the USA will go the route of Brazil (the epitome of a multi-racial polyglot nation.)
If the Long Boom finally falters and collapses, we can’t begin to imagine what the populace will do. I’m not yet ready to bet that the leftist cult is destined to obtain a “…Boot, on the face of humanity, forever.”
The professor is being racist, projecting that students will evaluate a certain way, based on the sex or color of the person being rated.
As a college educated, above-average IQ white male, I don’t get worked up about this kind of stuff, because I know that I actually do have a big advantage, and none of these kinds of efforts are going to do anything about it. My family has a tradition of academic and financial success, and we’re genetically prone to high iq, and that’s worth about 1000x more than any efforts at equal opportunity, race/gender laws, etc. For the white guys who mow lawns, build houses, etc, hopefully their families have good work ethics, because honestly anyone can learn to do those jobs. After watching low class white people vote for Trump, I’m not very sympathetic to their concerns. If they want to behave like animals, they can compete like everyone else.
You say you have high IQ and then act upset that working people would vote for a guy that wants to stop outsourcing and the importing of cheap labor to drive down wages?
You expect them to vote for MORE unemployment and lower wages?
You don’t sound very high IQ to me.
People like him seem to think that when the Majority-Minority cabal comes with a rope, his kids/grandkids won’t be at risk.
Civic Nationalism is cognitively null.
I remember when Hillary tried to give a homeless man a voter registration form, when she was running for senator. Hillary sought out lower class voters that she could exploit for her benefit.
College leftists are behaving like animals, preventing anyone with a different point of view from speaking to the students.
I know many highly educated people who voted for Trump. And many idiots who voted for Clinton.
Very reasonable non idiots, could argue anyone voting for either, cannot help but be anything but a dyed in the wool idiot…..
Voting against Hillary, is definitely not proof of idiocy, though. Whether that meant voting for Trump or Al-Baghdadi.
What does, OTOH, beyond all and any reasonable doubt prove we live in an age of limitless idiocy and little else, is that Ron Paul had enough traction to be highly visible nationwide, two presidential elections in a row. And yet, this once-was-worthwhile nation’s almost undifferentiated mass of abject idiots, went on to cheer for Romney, McCain and Obama instead…..
That proves idiocy like nothing else short of believing that “The System Will Collapse” is some sort of bad thing, rather than the unmitigated blessing it obviously (to all non idiots, at least) clearly is.
Ron you might be smart and got everything you wanted in life but there are also plenty of regular white guys and white girls some of whom get no chance to study due to there being affirmative action programs where average minorities pass them just due to them being a minority instead passing them on merit.
I can understand affirmative action for African Americans since they have lower chances at life due to history, due to black family destroying welfare since the 1970’s that incentivized single-motherhood and due to them many times being stuck in awful ghetto schools where they are being taught by incompetent teachers due to the teachers lobby protecting incompetent teachers.
However I can not understand illegal immigrants and dreamers taking away studying places through affirmative action and some states paying college for them.
Then once regular white guys and girls do not get into college there are tens of millions of illegals lowering wages and taking jobs so these who did not make it into college have many times no chance of getting a well paying job and no chance of buying an apartment or a house and no chance of starting a family.
In ideal world affirmative action would be limited only African Americans and American Indians and all illegals including dreamers would be deported and a wall built to stop illegals and drugs from coming to USA.
Also welfare benefits need to made such that they support family instead of incentivizing single-motherhood and instead of teacher lobby protecting incompetent teachers all incompetent teachers should be fired and teacher compensation should be partially tied to how well their students do in life.
Also all student debt should be made dischargeable in bankruptcy so that colleges and universities can not continually increase cost of education enabled by the out of control lenders that give money even for studying useless degrees where after graduation students can not find job in their field and instead end up pulling lattes with 100k-200k in student debt making sure they will be debt slaves for life.
You sound like the loud-mouth members of Colloquy Society (IQ threshold 140) who celebrate the Left’s entire civilization-destroying cult.
There’s something weird about supposedly smart people who lack the analytical acumen to see where their pet policies lead. It’s a perfect illustration of how abstract thought is still unevenly distributed even among the so-called smart.
45 years ago South African whites sported among the highest standard of living on Earth. The first successful heart transplants occurred there. Now look at what happened when whites, a shrinking demographic minority, took the high road and gave a subset of blacks (the ANC, an openly communist organization) majority rule.
If you think this isn’t your grandchildren’s or great-grandchildren’s fate, given current trends, you’re too short for this ride.
PS: My “above average” IQ is obviously north of 140. My kids’ IQs are all in the 1-in-500 or better range (more like 1-in-1000 or 1-in-2000, AKA north of 150.) But I’m not stupid enough to believe that if we become a minority in a Leftist-dominated idiocracy, being kings of the cesspool will be “a good thing.”
“Wonder how past students of Elizabeth Warren feel on her teaching skills.”
Grade F
You are clearly disparaging a native American Indian.
1/1024th native American indian.
If Warren put a feather in her hair it would be cultural appropriation.
The Berkeley campus is close to Hollywood… Its’ a disease and it spread.
Berkeley is across the bay from San Francisco. UCLA is close to Hollywood. Though it’s reasonable to argue the entire state is diseased.
I guess by that logic Orange County, CA, a rockbed of conservatism is a liberal playground.
Aaaal you need to get up to date. In the last election, enough late votes were found in Orange County CA to (yes in fact) elect the democrats.
I filled out these evaluations 30 years ago at UCLA. I never once thought about the TA or professors’ race or gender. I recall having numerous female professors and TA’s, and a fair number of minorities, though many fewer. My wife went on to TA in grad school at UCLA and actually still has her evaluations. She’s also a minority and never thought the evaluations were biased in any particular way based on gender or race. Ironically, both of her minority parents were tenured college professors at a Cal State University. One received a Teacher of the Year award based on student evaluations. Good thing they didn’t teach at an oppressive and backward place like Berkeley.
We had a good laugh over this post. More virtue signalling and “we know better than you” nonsense.
Similarly, I filled these sorts of evaluations many times. The race and gender of the professor never entered my mind in any case, with one exception, that being a Chinese Computer Science professor, and his race was only a factor because his English pronunciation was such that I could never understand a word he said (I did get a B in the course, thanks to the textbook). Looking back, I can say that I had good and bad professors in all races and genders.
Who will work harder to keep their job, a tenured professor or non-tenured? Perhaps the study reveals discrimination in awarding tenured positions.
Better yet, make all teaching positions non-tenured with employment contracts renewed yearly based, in part, on student evaluations and the teacher’s salary requirements. Immigrant teachers encouraged to apply, of course!
At a campus where half the students are Asian…..
I looked up the demographics out of curiosity. Of total undergraduate enrollment in Fall 2018, there are 30,853 students at Berkeley, of which 3,650 are white American males (they don’t break down international students by race). Less than 12%. Apparently they hold unusual sway in the evaluation process.
That is an insanely low number for white American males.
That number, based on the total undergraduate enrollment, is actually inflated. The incoming 2018 freshman class is 21.4% white. However, they didn’t break the gender ratio down for that group. Women are about 54% of the freshman class, so if that ratio holds for white students, the number of incoming white American males is just under 10% of fall freshman. It just doesn’t seem like an environment conducive to traditional views on racism and sexism.
Parts of California have changed radically in the last 30+ years. The high school I graduated from was about 35% white when I graduated in 1988. It is now 8% white. Knowing that makes me less surprised about the demographics at Berkeley.
Or maybe, simply, affirmative action hires don’t make the best professors.
Wonder how past students of Elizabeth Warren feel on her teaching skills.