Editor,

The criticisms leveled at the Student Course Review by Mr. Gernes last week are at least partially valid. Nevertheless, many of his assertions need to be further explained, clarified and put in their proper context so let me do so here.

The number of classes offered next semester falls short of the number of classes reviewed:

This point is absolutely true. The shortfall can partially be attributed to the selection criteria currently in place. To receive surveys, a class must be taught by a tenured or tenure-track faculty member. Classes taught by visiting faculty are not reviewed since it is not sensible to include classes taught by professors who likely won’t be here next year. Additionally, to receive surveys, a class must have an enrollment of more than five students since it is difficult to create a review with such few responses. These two factors help restrain the number of classes that could potentially be included.

The paucity of classes found in the Student Course Review can also largely be attributed to professors, for various reasons, not distributing surveys to their classes. They are currently not obligated to do so.

It is important to note that the number of classes has steadily increased through the semesters. Moreover, students can visit our web page (located at pages.pomona.edu/~review) to see if a class not included in the current edition had been reviewed in a previous edition.

The courses reviewed don’t match the classes offered next semester:

The only way courses reviewed would perfectly match the courses offered next semester is if professors taught exactly the same set of classes in the same semester every academic year. Of course this never occurs since professors go on leave, shift classes from fall to spring and vice versa, teach a class every other year, initiate new classes, let another professor assume a particular class, and so forth. If the current edition hasn’t reviewed a particular class I again recommend going to the web page to discover if it has been previously reviewed.

Course grades are inflated:

This fact is indisputable. But consider where that grade included in each review comes from. Each survey asks the student to assign the class a letter grade. The grade reported in each review simply measures the central tendency of the grades that students gave that class. Complaints about any grade inflation cannot be fairly directed at the authors of the Student Course Review.

The incredible self-selection bias in Student Course Review probably better explains the high grades. Since professors ultimately decide whether a class will be included, perhaps only the best classes and professors end up being included. Imagine how high student GPAs would be if we could, at the end of the semester, pick which classes we would be graded in.

The adjective/comments chosen are not insightful and not critical enough:

I agree with Mr. Gernes’ point that the adjectives used to describe professors "leave much to be desired." I can personally attest to the difficulty in trying to capture the essence of a professor in a single word, especially when several more survey questions remain to be answered. This question may need to be fine-tuned somewhat but it is

valuable since it is the only question that directly asks about the professor.

However, I do take issue with Mr. Gernes’ assertions that "vague comments are the norm," and that criticism is "rare." He can surely point to plenty of perfunctory comments whose existence I do not dispute, but to conclude that insightful comments are the exception is inaccurate as well as insulting to the all of the students who do put some effort into their responses. Furthermore, each review contains a question about students’ least favorite aspect of the class that presumably would capture criticism. Criticism could also be found in the question asking what students would tell a friend about the course and in the question about expectations met, so ample opportunity exists for students to air their complaints provided they have complaints and wish to disclose them.

When we choose which few adjectives and comments to include in a review, we try to select those that reflect the sentiment of the broader class whether they be positive, negative, or often both. Admittedly, this is an imperfect process. In such a brief review every opinion cannot be included. The Student Course Review has never aimed to be the definitive characterization of a class and can never be such. In the opening paragraph of his editorial, Mr. Gernes tells us his hopes "of finding the perfect class with the best professor." Even when the Student Course Review does reach its ideal form, Mr. Gernes’ hopes will remain quixotic if he expects to find academic nirvana inside its pages. This document can only hope to supplement student discussion and faculty advising in the tricky art of picking classes.

Perhaps the most important point that I can make is that the Student Course Review is entirely created from student responses to survey questions thus the more thoughtful and specific students can be in their description, praise, and criticism of a course, the more useful reviews can be.

So what can specifically be done to improve the Student Course Review? It would be helpful if faculty could give adequate time to complete the surveys. Few students will be motivated to substantively answer survey questions if it requires being late for the next class. The last week of class is already hectic so it is uncertain that all professors can or will give students more time than they already do.

Mandating that professors distribute our surveys is an intriguing idea but one that I am hesitant to endorse at this time. I am not sure on what grounds we can or even should compel professors to pass out student surveys. If so many professors are already not willing to distribute surveys under the current voluntary system, I expect strong resistance to any mandatory system. Nevertheless, Academic Affairs Commissioner-elect Jake Oken-Berg ’02 made this a central part of his campaign platform, so look for this to be pursued next year. Mr. Gernes points to the mandatory evaluations at CMC as some model for Pomona, but from what I have learned, students do not administer their system and the results are not published or really made public in any way, so his comparison doesn’t work. Among the Claremont Colleges, a student-based course review is unique to Pomona.

I am the first one to acknowledge that the Student Course Review has its shortcomings, but I also have witnessed much of its steady improvement since its inception just a few years ago. I hope that Mr. Gernes’ editorial and this letter can generate more concrete suggestions for improvement as well as elicit more thoughtful responses to the course

surveys that will be distributed at the end of this semester.

Sincerely,

Sujeet Indap ’00

Editor-in-Chief

The Student Course Review