Why Student Ratings of Faculty Are Unethical

• Published in: Journal of academic ethics Vol. 23; no. 3; pp. 523 - 545
• Main Author: Close, Daryl
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.09.2025; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Administration; Attention; College Faculty; Colleges & universities; Course Evaluation; Education; Educational evaluation; Educational Principles; Educational Quality; Educational Researchers; Educational tests & measurements; Ethics; Faculty Evaluation; Gender; Human subjects; Institutional Research; Justice; Merit Pay; Moral Issues; Organization and Leadership; Professional responsibilities; Psychological Testing; Psychological tests; Questionnaires; Rating Scales; Ratings & rankings; Reference Materials; Researchers; Sexually Transmitted Diseases; State Universities; Statistical Analysis; Student Evaluation; Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance; Student Participation; Student Satisfaction; Student Surveys; Students; Tenure; Validity; Violations; Student Ratings; Faculty Evaluation; Academic Freedom; Professional Autonomy; Scholarship of Teaching; Teaching Effectiveness
• DOI: 10.1007/s10805-024-09562-3
• ISSN: 1570-1727

For decades, student ratings of university faculty have been used by administrators in high stakes faculty employment decisions such as tenure, promotion, contract renewal and reappointment, and merit pay. However, virtually no attention has been paid to the ethical questions of using ratings in employment decisions. Instead, the ratings literature is generally limited to psychometric issues such as whether a given student ratings instrument exhibits the statistical properties of reliability and validity. There is no consensus understanding of teaching effectiveness, the very attribute that students are alleged to “evaluate.” What students are actually doing when they complete a ratings form—whether measuring, evaluating, reporting, judging, opining, etc.—remains unsettled in the ratings literature. If ratings are surveys of student satisfaction, they have no logical or ethical connection with teaching expertise. I argue that the administrative use of student ratings in faculty employment decisions violates basic moral principles including nonmaleficence, beneficence, professional autonomy and clinical independence, and multiple aspects of justice including due care, truthfulness, and equitable treatment. These ethical violations rule against any administrative use of student ratings in faculty employment decisions, including the “use with caution in conjunction with other evaluative methods” deployment of student ratings. My conclusion is that such use should be immediately and universally terminated. Formative use of student questionnaires as part of ordinary instructional communication and feedback between instructor and students is a separate issue and outside of the scope of this paper.