For public course evaluations

This Monday, Columbia’s undergraduate economics department took a step forward and released many of its fall 2011 course evaluations on Courseworks (“Econ department makes course evaluations public,” Feb. 21). The director of the department, Susan Elmes, explained that this strategy would allow students to choose courses in a more informed manner.

We applaud the economics department for making immediate progress on publishing course evaluations. The University Senate has deliberated on the subject since 2011. But action on it was continually stalled, and no policy was proposed or voted on. For the economics department, on the other hand, open evaluations are no breakthrough. In 2003, the department maintained the practice for a brief period, until staff could not put up evaluations on time.

Now that the economics department can continue the practice, this new development is a move in the right direction. As of now, CULPA reviews tend to be the only information that students have to make decisions on which courses to take. Although it is true that CULPA provides qualitative reviews, their format creates a selection bias. Most students who will be motivated to write a review will either love a course or hate it, generating polarized reviews and failing to provide a “middle ground.” Moreover, many of the reviews also tend to be highly outdated.

The course evaluations on Courseworks that the economics department has released follow a quantitative structure, using a scale of 1 to 5 for several categories. This may mean that students who wouldn’t write a qualitative review on CULPA will be better reflected in the evaluations. The worst that could come of this new development would be students knowing no more than they do now. More likely, students will have access to more information at registration time.

That the faculty is taking initiative with this effort is promising. But students also ought to remember that we are just as key a part of this equation as faculty, and that we need to take evaluations seriously and pressure our own departments to follow suit. As of now, this is a symbolic step by the economics department, one of the largest departments at Columbia. We hope it will serve as an example.