The current course evaluations that all St. Edward’s University students are required to fill out at the end of each semester are detrimental for students and professors.

Course material varies. For example, an accounting or finance class may contain content that challenges in different ways than a political science class. The evaluations don’t tell you the full story about the professors. Students themselves might not be particularly qualified to comment on the necessities of the courses.

And that’s not to say political science isn’t challenging. It’s just different from accounting. Students answer the same vague questions for every course and decide if it applies to that course. They then can write feedback for the professor.

The evaluations are typed up or scanned, and reviewed by several people, including the professor. But why have a standard evaluation for every class? Having the same questions for every class might sound fair in theory, but in reality, it’s not.

The question “this course helped me think analytically or critically of about this subject” is impossible to fairly judge when taking dramatically different courses.

One semester I took the Artist Sketchbook class (watercoloring was full) to satisfy my CULF 1319 – Understanding and Appreciating the Arts credit. The same semester I also took BUSI 3303 – Legal Environment of Business.

I wholeheartedly enjoyed both classes. But to have the exact same questions on what to improve on, is unfair to the professor teaching the course.

As Albert Einstein once said, “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

If St. Edward’s wants to make it truly fair, have the same evaluation questions within each department, rather than across the entire university.

And what good is it to do evaluations at the end of the semester? It does nothing for the current class.

We pay a lot money to take these courses. To say that it will help future students is true, but it should also help you in the present here and now.

Some will probably say to just talk to the professor during the course and tell them how to improve.

But that could be a daunting task when you’re 19 and talking to a 60 year old professor with a Ph.D. Many students don’t want to offend and potentially get on the bad side of a professor.

And currently some professors give mid-semester evaluations, for their own personal use. This is something that could be mandated for every course. There needs to be some form of mid-semester evaluations.

I know professors don’t like to be “mandated” to do anything, but they already are at the end of the semester.

So why waste time each semester with these outdated evaluations? Why not instead institute some system of generating useful feedback, so that we can better learn — or teach — together?