(THE COLLEGE FIX) — Voters in the U.S., Europe and Australia allegedly prefer conservative politicians because they are better-looking than liberals, and American students show similar preferences with their professors, a new study claims.
Published in the journal Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, the study by Northwestern University chemical engineering Ph.D. candidate Andrew Rosen looked at nearly 8 million ratings posted by students on RateMyProfessors.com:
Positive correlations were observed between ratings of instruction quality and easiness, as well as between instruction quality and attractiveness. On average, professors in science and engineering disciplines have lower ratings than in the humanities and arts. When looking at RateMyProfessors as a whole, the effect of a professor’s gender on rating criteria is small but statistically significant. When analysing the data as a function of discipline, however, the effects of gender are significantly more pronounced, albeit more complex.