By Michele Richinick
Some students have used RateMyProfessors.com to comment on professors they love or hate and gather feedback from past students to help make class decisions. Since the end of 2007, MTV’s mtvU, the host of RateMyProfessors.com, launched an adjunct site to offer professors a 30-second spot to respond to the comments made about them. RateMyProfessors.com, a website established by college students in the late ’90s, allows students to discuss and rate the professors at their schools. Introduced Oct. 10, “Professors Strike Back” allows professors around the country the chance to pass judgments on comments on RateMyProfessors.com, said Stephen Friedman, the general manager of mtvU.
After hearing about RateMyProfessors.com from one of her Boston University students, Tinker Ready, a part-time Northeastern journalism lecturer and adjunct Boston University writing lecturer put her name on the site in 2005. Students began commenting about her teaching on the website in early 2006.
“I was new to teaching and wanted to see what students would say about me. I also thought it might be fun,” she said in an e-mail to The News.
Out of 17 ratings from BU students, Ready received an overall quality score of 3.9 out of 5.
Last November, mtvU gave Ready the opportunity to create her own episode on “Professors Strike Back.”
“MtvU contacted me via what looked like a mass e-mail mailing to BU professors. One reason I agreed to do it was because, as a journalist, I call people all the time and ask for interviews,” Ready said. “They often lend me their time and I thought I should do the same for the mtvU producer.” Since she put her name on RateMyProfessors.com, Ready has received two comments on the website from Northeastern students and 17 comments from Boston University students.
“I didn’t need to ‘strike back’ at any students and I tried not to be mean or snarky,” she said. “At that time, most of the comments on RateMyProfessors.com were either positive or only mildly critical. Since then, a Boston University student posted a very negative comment calling me an ‘awful lady.'”
Many professors around the country wanted to respond to the comments, so mtvU created the idea of striking back at the students, Friedman said.
“It was fun but I immediately regretted it when I realized it would be one of the first hits on a Google search of my name,” Ready said. “But I don’t think I embarrassed myself too much.”
When creating the new features to RateMyProfessors.com, Friedman was unsure about the professors’ responses. Students are being clear about their issues with the professors, and mtvU has received an incredible response from the professors themselves. There are 40 new episodes this semester alone, Friedman said.
“There has been incredible feedback from ‘Professors Strike Back,'” Friedman said. “Episodes are ranked higher than most music premieres. The episodes are hitting a chord with the audience.”
Some of the episodes came as surprises to the workers at mtvU.
“Professor Ready is a great example. She is enjoying the give and take of the students,” Friedman said. “[The new features] create a playful quality between professors and students. One professor cursed out his students on air; a student wanted to be a female professor’s ‘sex-slave’ and another student said he wanted to be her ‘soldier boy.’ One student even said a professor enjoyed ripping students to shreds, and the professor admitted to it on ‘Professors Strike Back.'”
According to an announcement last October, RateMyProfessors.com is the highest trafficked United States college professor rating site, with almost 6,000 schools and 7,500,000 ratings, providing an automated system for quickly researching and rating more than one million professors from colleges and universities across the country and other international territories. The site reaches approximately 1.5 million college students each month and more than 150,000 students log on daily. “It is a simple site to use and it has grown to be a great resource for college students. There are millions of ratings, so the site gives a broad range of students’ opinions. By using this website, students can make smart decisions about which professors they want to have,” Friedman said.
More than 20,000 students have used the Facebook application for RateMyProfessors.com. This application allows students to stay on Facebook while searching the website.
“I did use RateMyProfessors.com for choosing which classes I would take for this semester. I read the comments but it seemed like a lot of the teachers all had the same comments,” said Eric Frankenberg, a freshman music industry major.
Stephanie Piacenza, a freshman digital-arts photography major, said she has never looked at RateMyProfessors.com.
“I think that professors should just ignore what is being said about them on any site. It doesn’t have as big of an effect on students as the professors think it does,” she said. “Most people don’t base their schedule around what professor teaches what class. The most important things are what classes you need to take for your major, what classes interest you and the times classes are offered.”
Most of the professors understand, however, that the website is one of the main places of information that students explore before choosing classes, Friedman said.
“College is about having that professor who takes the subject to a new level, and RateMyProfessors.com allows students to see each other’s comments about those particular professors,”Friedman said. The episodes are airing now on mtvU, and are available on demand at mtvU.com (www.mtvU.com/professors_strike_back/). The full 2007 RateMyProfessors.com rankings are also available online.
