Every semester students from every college across the nation take courses they’re either eager to take or dreading because they’re unfamiliar with the material. In addition, they’re faced with  choosing their courses based on either their schedules or the particular professor teaching that module. One website has dedicated its mission to letting the students grade their professors at the various colleges. Rate My Professors has been the top searched website for students and is causing a lot of buzz. Students love this site; however, some professors take offense because it either over exaggerates their character or reflects them in a negative light.
Rate My Professors was created by mtvU, which is owned by MTV Networks Music & Logo Group, a unit of the Viacom Media Network. It was founded by John Swapceinski, a software engineer, back in May 1999. Their target audience was college students, and the development of this site continued to grow based on their audience. According to their site, they have over 1.8 million professors and 8,000 schools in their database from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.  Milwaukee Area Technical College is among the colleges listed and our professors are subject to student feedback on their classroom performance and teaching style. Being that we’re a two-year institution, professors at our college are actually instructors.
While searching the site you can search by college or just the professor’s name.  The content for this site is generated by college students; therefore, you will find numerous grammatical errors which would aid most professors’ defense. I’ve found several of my instructors (past and present) listed and I wondered whether reading these reviews would have hindered me from taking their class. I would have to say, yes, because I went into the classroom with the assumption that every professor was there to assist in my growth and development. However, the condescension and ridicule I experienced in one of my earlier classes almost made me want to quit. It was then that someone mentioned to me the Rate My Professors website.
Now when I register for a class, the first place I go when choosing my classes is RateMyProfessors.com, because there I can read about how the professor manages his or her classroom, their unconventional behavior, and their teaching style.  Now keep in mind, you have to be objective during this process and realize that students have their own biases as well. I’ve found several instructors that received low markings based on students’ opinions or preferences as to how they thought the instructor should teach or manage the classroom. Unfortunately, we as students have to remember, “It’s their room and their rules.”
In conversation with my peers around the college, students shared some common complaints such as: instructors making racial slurs in classrooms, instructors going off topic and into tangents, seeing instructors dress unprofessionally, and constant tardiness to their own classroom.  Arguably, some believe they could have taken the class online to avoid an instructor altogether, but then we spoke on the issues we faced online which included: instructors not answering emails in a timely manner, not attending their office hours or extending them, and not being able to work Blackboard proficiently themselves.
No matter how anyone feels, Rate My Professors gives individuals the ability to post their opinions, but expressing those opinions can have consequences. The Village Voice reported on Oct. 26, 2011, that a math professor from the University of Saskatchewan was fired for his posts about his colleagues in his department. Now, that was one account of a professor being affected by the site.
Rate  My  Professors can be a friend or foe to professors/instructors, but it has some unique features that are comical. Students can rank their professors by hotness, you heard me correctly.
Students are checking out their professors while gazing at them lecturing. Other categories under their fun list tab you’ll find: Most Awesome Professor, Nobel Prize Winning Professor, #Most Followed Professor, and Schools With the Happiest Students.  Our college professors were rated 3.77 out of 5 with 453 instructors listed on the site.
Top rated professor was a chemistry instructor, Freddie Arocho-Perez, who received 27 positive ratings and also was rated the hottest teacher on campus. Other professors who were rated highly among students were: Rich Northouse (mathematics), Marcia Tipton (psychology), Mohammad Kasraian (economics), and Clement Magner (psychology) who achieved over 20 positive ratings from students. The top three professors were also rated “the hottest.”  It would be great to see all professors making the grade and rated by the students fairly and giving future students insight into their forthcoming instructor.
The reason why I mention this site is to inform students what resources are available to them. Knowing the great instructors that we have on campus is more important now than ever. Next semester some of these outstanding instructors may or may not be here due to Wisconsin 2011 Act 10, which was proposed by Governor Scott Walker. The reality of that bill could strike when next semester comes and students don’t have access to professors with the same level of knowledge and experience.
Rate My Professors.com gives me an opportunity to evaluate professors, not to ridicule them during this time, but to appreciate and applaud their efforts in my success.
After this semester, grading a professor could be the least of our concerns, because we, the students, may have to take whatever is given to us.