Don’t be fooled by rumors of easy escape routes, instructors. You can’t get out of Rate My Professors, at least not easily.
The review website — popular among students, poison among professors — allows students to anonymously share stories about their instructors and rate them on their quality of instruction, the difficulty of their courses, and other factors. It once allowed users to rate the “hotness” of their instructors, but that controversial feature was removed last year.
Some students love the site, saying it gives them an unbiased preview of professors whose courses they’re considering taking. Professors endure what may not be accurate reviews because they literally have no say in the matter. It can be especially frustrating because Rate My Professors reviews often show up prominently when searching for a professor online.
But Naomi Lightman, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Calgary, in Canada, seemed to find a solution. Last week she tweeted that unwilling instructors could just email the website and ask for their profiles to be taken down:
Lightman declined The Chronicle’s request for comment.
Some academics chided her for what they characterized as an attempt to dodge criticism and avoid improving her teaching, but many seemed thrilled at the news.
While the technique appeared to work for Lightman — her name still appears on the site, but there are no reviews — it failed for others who tried.
Carlo DiMarco, a spokesman for Cheddar, the media company that owns the site, said the company is aware of a tweet that “indicates we remove professors upon request.”
“Apologies for any confusion this may have caused,” he wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “However, this was not a statement by our company, and it does not accurately reflect our policies.”
DiMarco wrote that Rate My Professors might remove profiles in special cases — for example, if a professor left a college associated with his or her profile, or if comments on the profile violated another country’s privacy laws. He said the company couldn’t comment on individual cases and thus couldn’t say if Lightman’s profile had been removed because she is in Canada.
In some cases, he said, the company also removes individual comments that violate its site guidelines, which include posting false information or details that could identify other students. The guidelines also seek to keep the site free of hostility.
“We have no tolerance for harassment, vulgarity, or personal attacks, and remove any reviews containing such content,” DiMarco wrote.
Jennifer A. Thompson, an associate professor in the Jewish-studies program at California State University at Northridge, was among the instructors who tried to get their profiles removed after Lightman’s tweet.
Thompson sent her request by email on a Sunday and received a response the next day telling her that professors’ profiles are removed only in special circumstances.
Thompson told The Chronicle that she hadn’t looked at her profile in years, though some of her friends have told her that “the students either love me or hate me.” In an email she also wrote that she understands students want to know what to expect from a potential instructor, but the site seems to open the door to potentially damaging misinformation.
“It’s pretty disheartening,” she added, “that this presumably for-profit site can publish these comments with no quality control.”
Chris Quintana is a staff reporter. Follow him on Twitter @cquintanadc or email him at chris.quintana@chronicle.com.
