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Estimating the impact of relative expected grade on student evaluations of teachers
ARTICLE

Economics of Education Review Volume 31, Number 1 ISSN 0272-7757 Publisher: Elsevier Ltd

Abstract

Grade inflation over the past few decades has been a concern for many universities. Course evaluation scores are known to be positively correlated with students’ expected grades, and this paper tests whether or not there is an incentive for the instructor to “buy” higher evaluation scores by inflating grades. To test this hypothesis, I use unique data from the University of Washington's Office of Educational Assessment that includes a measure of each student's relative expected grade in the course. I find that there is an incentive for instructors to grade leniently after accounting for the potential endogeneity of the relative expected grade variable due to unobserved teacher productivity and unobserved heterogeneity of instructors and departments. Instructor fixed effects account for a significant part of the measured effect of relative expected grade on evaluations, and by not including them, the estimated impact of relative expected grade on evaluations is biased upwards.

Citation

Ewing, A.M. Estimating the impact of relative expected grade on student evaluations of teachers. Economics of Education Review, 31(1), 141-154. Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved September 25, 2023 from .

This record was imported from Economics of Education Review on March 1, 2019. Economics of Education Review is a publication of Elsevier.

Full text is availabe on Science Direct: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2011.10.002

Keywords

References

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