GMAT Essays (AWA)

AWA ESSAYS: Analyze Issues
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.”

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

YOUR RESPONSE:
While its true that the mission of a university is to educate its students and enrich them with knowledge, a student does not get educated just by his or her professors. There is as much learning outside a classroom as there is inside it. Professors, however, do have a major impact on students' learning but this does not mean that professors pay and promotions should be based primarily on students' evaluations of his or her courses.

In any given class, there will be students who do well and those who don't do so well. It can be assumed that students who do well on the class would rate the professor higher than those who don't do so well. Does this mean that the professor was successful in educating only some students and not others? A student's performance in class is impacted by various factors and to pinpoint those to the professor would not be right.

Also, if the sole criteria of a professor's pay and promotions would be students evaluation, most if not all of the professors would be concerned about what the student's think of the professor and not what the students' learn. Since a GPA is an essential factor in landing a good job or getting accepted into a premium university for further education, most professors would be more keen on students' scoring high grades, which in turn would mean better evaluations, than enriching them with essential knowledge.

Sometimes, you don't realize what you have learnt until you actually have to apply it. I remember when i first started my career in telecommunications, I had to undergo intensive training in electronic circuits. To my surprise, I had already covered the basics in a class I undertook in my sophomore year and more so I remembered most of the topics. This is not because I enjoyed the class, but because the professor was known to give exremely tough exams, for which if you didnt attend the lectures you would most likely fail. I worked hard for the class and passed. But, if I were to have evaluated my professor back then, I would have given him a bad rating. Now however, when i think back, if it wasn't for his lectures I would have never understood the concepts and done so well in my job.

Therefore, to to base a professor's pay and promotions on students' evaluations of his or her courses would be unfair to the professor and lead to unwanted results for both the university and the students. Maybe, a part of the evaluation could come from students but to make it the sole criterial would be utterly foolish.

Could someone plz give me a feedback on my essays? I have my exam in about 3 weeks and have just started writing essays. Any inputs would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.