Student Evaluations, Neoliberal Managerialism, and Networks of Mistrust

Abstract

Though student evaluations and their flaws have been much commented on lately—in addition to recent coverage in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, and NPR’s education blog, major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post have also devoted coverage to this issue—there has been little attention paid to student evaluations’ place and function in the larger ideological framework of contemporary higher education. That is, the flaws of student evaluations are not isolated from the larger issues threatening higher education today, but rather are symptoms of the way neoliberal policies have reshaped the university and the roles of teachers and students within it over the past three decades.