Collapsing onto a couch after a "horrible" class at the University of Nebraska, Kasey Kerber wished that he could have known what to expect in the course before signing up for it. A short time later, with the help of some technologically-inclined friends, Kerber introduced MyProfessorSucks.com, a website that provides students with the opportunity to share their opinion of different professors.
It is now four months after the website's first appearance, and it is growing on a national level.
"Basically, we just wanted the site to be a resource for students," said Kerber, who has graduated since he set up the webpage. "It's not only a site for students to find out what professors are bad, but it's also a site to find out what professors are really good - about 60 to 70 percent of the evaluations are good."
Some really glowing things are said. And when a student posts a negative evaluation, students who don't agree will post subsequent evaluations and come to the professor's defense pretty quickly," he continued.
One University of Nebraska professor, for example, had been voted Teacher of the Year two years in a row but received a poor first evaluation on the website. Several rebuttal evaluations rolled in during the subsequent hours that disagreed with the first one.
"We didn't create it to rag on professors [although] the name gives it that impression," Kerber said. "It's the good mixed in with the bad."
Though the site was built to give students the chance to "hand out the grades," comments are examined for content before they are posted. A student can choose a formulated statement for immediate posting or write an original one that will be read by one the site's managers before appearing on the site.
"If you harm a professor's reputation with his students or his colleagues, they could come after you. We want to be very fair and respectable," Kerber said. "We want students to know that they are grading their professors on their performance and not on whether or not they have a wart on their chin."
So far, no evaluations of Tufts' professors have been posted, nor have evaluations cropped up from any other Boston-area college - but the website is still young.
"It's still kind of small. We don't have a ton of evaluations," Kerber said, adding that approximately one thousand evaluations have been posted.
The evaluations have come for the most part, from schools in the Midwest, where the site's designers have been able to do promotions and other colleges have featured the site in their newspapers.
"The University of Southern Illinois ran a story in their newspaper, and within 24 hours, there were 75 different professors evaluated," Kerber said. He added that the students who originally visited the site have been returning to "see what's new" with evaluations of their own professors.
Upon entering the site, students can choose the state where their college is located and then click on the specific school from the three subheadings that divide the schools by size. "Big Daddy" describes a student population of 20,000 or more; "Medium's My Style" has between 10,000 and 19,999 students; and "Hey! Size Doesn't Matter" labels schools that, like Tufts, have a student body of 9,999 or less.
In submitting an evaluation, the site asks the student to grade the professor on his "coolness," the toughness of the class being taught, and the worth of the class. All professors who receive an overall grade of B+ or better are inducted to the "A+ club" to recognize their achievements.
MyProfessorSucks.com grades on a curve, too.
