Faculty Feedback: What does it mean?

In most of the B Schools student feedback is given topmost priority while evaluating the performance of faculties. This is also easy to understand because the job of a faculty is (also) to teach and faculty feedback reflects the performance of a good faculty.

But a recent research done in US covering more than 3000 feedbacks shows some alarming trend. The research results show three things.

a) Students give good feedback in courses where they think they have understood everything. This is easy to understand. However, this also gives scope for manipulation. If a faculty wants good feedback all he has to do is to delete the difficult part of the course and focus on the easier part of the course. In the process the students get the impression that they understood a large part of what is covered in the course. But good feedback comes at what cost?

b) Students give good feedback in courses where they get good grades. Most of the B Schools follow continuous evaluation system. Therefore by the time the students give feedback to a faculty, the students know the grades of most of the components. A faculty can similarly manipulate the feedback by being lenient while evaluating the students. Again this is not good for the students because if the students are sure to receive a good grade it is very unlikely they will take the course seriously.

c) Students give good feedback in courses where the faculty looks sexy. Well, This is one area which a faculty cannot probably manipulate.

So think of the feedback that a faculty receives if he covers highly advanced stuff in the class and he is very strict in grading. Everybody would definitely consider him to be an ideal faculty. Excepting of course that he would not be rated so by the students he teaches.