Ratemyprofessors.com, a website created in 1999, gives students the opportunity to switch places with their professors and rate them according to their performance. Such ratings include easiness, helpfulness and clarity. Students may also give the professor a “hotness” rating and leave comments regarding the professor.
The creator of the website, John Swapceinski, came up with the idea while he was a student at San Jose State University. “I had a particularly nasty professor who also happened to be an unfair grader and I wanted to warn other students about her, so I decided to start Rate My Professors in order to do so,” Swapceinski said.
The site, which gets about 3 million visitors a month, displays both positive and negative feedback from students who have had these professors. It is free and any student may post, whether they are a registered member of the site or not.
Lisa Davis, a senior elementary education major, uses the site frequently in order to find out the ratings on professors before she chooses her classes. “If they don’t have a good rating, I steer clear,” Davis said.
Dr. Seth Frechie, associate professor of English, thinks it is a “great site as long as people don’t get nasty.” Although Frechie has visited the site, he seems to have another site in mind, “I’m waiting for a rateyourstudent.com. I’d be the first person to open an account.”
Ratemyprofessors.com contains ratings for professors throughout the United States and Canada. The amount of ratings each professor gets is unlimited.
Gabrielle LaVenia, a junior English secondary education major, plans to use the site next semester. “I usually look at it after I am already in the class to prepare myself for what is ahead of me,” LaVenia said.
Although the site can be very helpful to students, there are those that tend to be skeptical about it.
Richard Mitchell, adjunct professor of mathematics, does not feel that the users of the site present a “random sampling” of students. Mitchell feels that there may be students who don’t even know about the website or how to use it, leaving the results unbalanced. “The idea behind it is good, but the data is skewed,” Mitchell said.
Jennifer Ayoub, a graduate education student, does not use the site to influence her decision to take a specific professor. “I like to see for myself what the professor is like and make my own judgment.”
Whether students are for or against the site, the ratings on ratemyprofessors.com are available for those who decide to check it out.
