Naturally, there are people coming down on both sides of the issue, but how can more transparency be a bad thing?

Maura Lerner of the Star Tribune reports.

Course ratings, long secret, may go public at University of Minnesota

For years, students at the University of Minnesota have been dutifully filling out evaluations at the end of each semester, rating their courses and professors.

But the results, for the most part, have been a closely guarded secret. Starting this fall, that may change.

For the first time, students would be able to look up any course on the U website and see what other students have to say about it, under a proposal before the Faculty Senate. If approved, it will be the culmination of more than a decadelong campaign by student leaders to try to pry the ratings open. “There is a huge demand by students to have more information,” said Nicholas Ohren, 18, a freshman from Eau Claire, Wis., who has taken up the cause. If he knew a course was getting bad reviews, he said, “it would be a lot easier to avoid.”

Traditionally, student evaluations have been internal documents — read and used by the faculty themselves. But increasingly, colleges and universities have come under pressure to post them publicly, in part as a response to sites like Ratemyprofessor.com, where students can share their uncensored opinions online.

Today’s students have grown up expecting this kind of openness, said Valkyrie Jensen, 19, a U sophomore and student representative. “If there’s information, it should be shared, especially on a university setting.”

Yet traditionalists argue that consumer reviews, in a university setting, make little sense.

“The evaluations will tell you, indirectly, how well a professor dresses, how well he or she tells jokes,” said Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University engineering professor who runs a website called GradeInflation.com. Or worse, he said, they reward easy graders over demanding ones. “When you start putting evaluations out before the public, what you’re conveying is a message that student satisfaction is more important than quality of education. And that to me sends the wrong signal.”