22. Grading Professors

His lectures are like reading Charles Dickens; long, boring, and never ending.

I swear, she must have gotten her degree out of a vending machine.

If you are entertained by strange old men, he’s a keeper!

—Comments posted on ProfessorPerformance.com

James D. Miller, an associate economics professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, thinks he’s figured out a way to get his peers to do a better job of teaching: Bribe them.

Here’s his idea: Schools would give each graduating senior $1,000 to reward the professors they valued the most. Miller argued that students would take the task more seriously than they would end-of-the-semester evaluations. Colleges that embraced the reward system could end up attracting ...

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