Q: "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.
A:
The mission of a university is no doubt to educate its students. But the plan to base a Professor's pay solely on students doesn't seem to capture the university's complete mission. A good university needs top notch professors and professors deserve to be paid well. This in-turn would attract more prospering students and the success of such students would bring more shine to the university. Its all connected through a vicious circle. Thus in order to impart good education to budding students , the universities need to have highly skilled professors and with that is associate a cost, in terms of pay and promotion.
The argument here is whether the students should be primarily responsible for evaluating a professor or not? Students come from various background and knowledge levels and the definition of a good professor for one student may be totally different for another student. Its all fare as long as the student understands the professors lectures and is able to get a successful career out of it. But if the student is given full control to evaluate a professor then there is no guarantee that the student is being honest and not allowing his/her poor academic records clash with the evaluation. The professors whole career is put to stake here because of some false alarm by a student and for no fault of his own. Such misjudgments can demotivate the professors and prevent them from delivering their best in the subsequent classes. This will impact the student finally.
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.
A:
The mission of a university is no doubt to educate its students. But the plan to base a Professor's pay solely on students doesn't seem to capture the university's complete mission. A good university needs top notch professors and professors deserve to be paid well. This in-turn would attract more prospering students and the success of such students would bring more shine to the university. Its all connected through a vicious circle. Thus in order to impart good education to budding students , the universities need to have highly skilled professors and with that is associate a cost, in terms of pay and promotion.
The argument here is whether the students should be primarily responsible for evaluating a professor or not? Students come from various background and knowledge levels and the definition of a good professor for one student may be totally different for another student. Its all fare as long as the student understands the professors lectures and is able to get a successful career out of it. But if the student is given full control to evaluate a professor then there is no guarantee that the student is being honest and not allowing his/her poor academic records clash with the evaluation. The professors whole career is put to stake here because of some false alarm by a student and for no fault of his own. Such misjudgments can demotivate the professors and prevent them from delivering their best in the subsequent classes. This will impact the student finally.
