GMAT Essays (AWA)

ESSAY QUESTION:
"The mission of a university is to educate its students. Therefore, a professor's pay and promotions should be based primarily on students' evaluations of his or her courses."

Some people think that the mission of the university is to educate its students. With this understanding, they conclude that a professor's pay and promotions should be based primarily on students' evaluations of his or her courses. The issue is a controversial one but a closer examination reveals that the conclusion is unconvincing and flawed to quite a large extent.

Most of us strongly believe that the mission of a university should definitely be to educate students. Also, in general, students in a class have intelligence ranging from very intelligent to weak ones. Although a professor could be a really good one, it all boils down to the performance of the student. It is quite possible that a lot of students in a class are misfit for the course. To support the point with an example, if a premier university doesn't filters students based on their profiles before admitting to a course, students can be a misfit for not being intelligent enough to perform in the class. In a case like this, although the professor being very good, students are bound to perform poorly. As a result, the professor would be paid poorly and his promotion would be stopped. This could demotivate the professor and he could start looking for a new job.

Research shows that students perform better when they are provided with good infrastructure support like playgrounds to play, extra curricular activities, etc. These services provide the students with a fair mix of class room study and extra curricular activity. Students can be happier and in turn concentrate more on the studies. Since these services are provided by the university, the university itself should be responsible for the performance of its students and not professors who are just employees working for the university. There are many other factors which affect the performance of a student. Many of these are external factors to which the professors do not have a say in.

Although it is agreed by many that professors can help a student perform, the primary reason of his promotion or pay hike shouldn't be the performance of the student solely. The university should take many other factors into account such as consistent performance of the professor in his teachings, how many years has he been professing, his contribution into various other activities in the university, etc. A professor's pay hike or promotion should be a fair mix of his total contribution to the university with a holistic approach.

In sum, although the performance of students' evaluations should be one of the factors in deciding the pay hike or promotion of a professor, it shouldn't be the only or primary one.