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"There\u2019s a reason why Ezra Fitz is so well-liked by his students \u2014 even though he\u2019s a pretty awful teacher, when you think about it. It could be because he\u2019s attractive, but according to a new study, it\u2019s probably just because he\u2019s male. \n\nEconomist Anne Boring of Sciences Po, a university in Paris, teamed up with Kellie Ottoboni and Philip Stark at the University of California, Berkeley to figure out if there were any gender biases in Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET), after discovering that male students were rating male instructors higher than females ones on evaluations at her school. She then decided to transplant her theory of &amp;quot;double standards&amp;quot; in these evaluations, and the results in both field studies show glaring examples of gender biases pervading higher education.\n\nIn France, where Boring found male students routinely rated their male teachers more favorably, an anonymously graded exam capped out the students\u2019 semesters, and there was no significant difference between the grades of the students taught by men and the students taught by women. In fact, NPR reports that &amp;quot;the students of male instructors on average did slightly worse on the final.&amp;quot; This means that male students\u2019 belief that they&amp;#39;re learning more from male teachers is a perception issue. \n\nIn the U.S., they found that female students preferred male teachers, routinely rating them higher across the board. According to NPR, \u201CStudents were taking a single online class with either a male or female instructor. In half the cases, the instructors agreed to dress in virtual drag: The men used the women&amp;#39;s names and vice versa.\u201D The results were depressing as female students who thought their female professor was male rated her higher than the ones who thought she was female. On the other hand, the female students who thought their male teacher was female rated him lower than the ones who thought he was male, again proving that that the perception that male professors are better than female ones is nothing more than a preconceived, and incorrect, notion. \n\nThe study claims that teaching evaluations measure student satisfaction more than actual teaching effectiveness, and disadvantage female teachers. The authors are concerned that the scores will used by academic institutions to make hiring decisions. Hopefully, the findings in these studies will prove that SETs shouldn&amp;#39;t be taken at face value. If there\u2019s anything we need in higher education, it\u2019s more diversity, not less. \n\nRelated:  This New Study Says Pretty Girls Get Better Grades in School\n\nCheck out Teen Vogue\u2019s February issue cover star, Amandla Stenberg.\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.teenvogue.com/story/students-evaluate-male-professors-more-favorably>