In recent years systematic evaluation of university courses has become common in Germany. While the statistical, sociological and psychological aspects have been quite thoroughly explored, there is little linguistic research on this kind of evaluation. This paper will endeavour to present, on the basis of a >speech act model of judgement<, the fundamental problems connected to the evaluation of teaching university courses from a linguistic point of view. This is done for reasons that are explained in detail in this paper - not in the form of a strictly linguistic model, but by way of a popular scientific argumentation.