Beauty in the classroom: are German students less blinded? Putative pedagogical productivity due to professors’ pulchritude: peculiar or pervasive?

Abstract

Given that instructional student ratings measure differences in pedagogical productivity, this study examines whether perceived attractiveness of German university teachers impact on these differences. Apart from some refinements and adjustments to idiosyncracies of the German system of higher learning, the quantitative analysis widely follows the strategy of the seminal work by Hamermesh and Parker (2005), based on US data. In comparison to findings for the USA, perceived attractiveness of teachers is found to have, if at all, only a weakly significant and quantitatively less important impact on the evaluation outcomes.

Acknowledgments and Disclaimer

My thanks are due to Dan Hamermesh from whose comments the paper benefited greatly. Suggestions by Mark Taylor are also gratefully appreciated. For taking the time to fill out the rating forms in order to assess the attractiveness of my former colleagues at the University of Munich, I am indebted to all students of my econometrics and monetary theory and policy classes (winter semester 2003/2004, University of Bamberg).

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do neither necessarily represent those of the staff nor of the dean of students (StudiendekanIn) of the Department of Economics at the University of Munich.

Notes

¹ Reputational, (indirectly) economic, or any other pay-offs of getting positively evaluated. A comprehensive survey of the literature on the positive association between teaching quality and offers as well as increases of salaries earned by US academic staff is given in Hamermesh and Parker (2005). Indirectly, it is also confirmed for the UK by McGuiness (2003) who suggests a link from a university's higher pricing to the prestige earned by a high Quality Assurance Agency Teaching Assessment. As instructional ratings in Germany are merely standardized, still scattered, and just have been established in recent years across university departments corresponding evidence is not available.

² Considered were students enrolled in studies leading to bachelor (BA), master (MA), and equivalent degrees (Diplom-Volkswirt/Diplom-Kaufmann) in economics (VWL) or management (BWL).

³ Ranging from Advanced Industrial Organization to Zwischenkriegszeit in Deutschland, i.e. a class in economic and social history on the inter-war period in industrialized Germany.

⁴ During my undergraduate and graduate studies and years as a TA in the economics department at the University of Munich (1992–2001), I experienced the young history of its instructional rating: It can be described as a development from a students’ initiative to a highly visible evaluation programme processed in cooperation with the department of statistics, and the creation of a new office: the students’ dean (StudiendekanIn). The latter is hold by a professor of the department. The staff at the chair of the students’ dean is responsible for the provision of rating forms and the coordination of students who administer the evaluation instrument.

⁵ Following the German convention the order of grades is ascending (1–5) with descending attributes (excellent to very unsatisfactory).

⁶ Note, statements and possible answers are subject to the author's translation. A sample rating form in German can be found at http://www.fs-bwl.uni-muenchen.de/downloads/derwasti.

⁷ Source: http://www.fs-bwl.uni-muenchen.de/downloads/derwasti (Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft studentischer Interessenvertretung e. V.; run of print. version of corresponding magazine: 2300 copies).

⁸ Details and descriptive statistics on the constitution of beauty ratings are given in Table 3b.

⁹ One of the reasons for not including the entire staff is given by the fact that instructors may have changed affiliations or left academia. Their pictures are no longer available on the internet. It should be noted that online and print publication of one's own instructional rating results is not mandatory. However, less than 5% of the instructors do not agree with the publication.

¹⁰ How a potentially implied sample selection bias is dealt with is discussed at the end of the following section.

¹¹ As students have different means and variances in their rating of photographs, i.e. in their beauty assessment, each rater's scores have been normalized before the average index has been calculated (Table 1b).

¹² Remember German grades are increasing (from 1 to 6) with decreasing attributes (from excellent to insufficient). In the present study this holds for both the instructional and the beauty grades.

¹³ As to the gender mix, female instructors make about one-fifth of total departmental staff. A fact that is taken into account in the sample used here (Table 3a).

¹⁴ Interestingly, Hamermesh and Parker (2005) find a disparity of similar quantitative size.

¹⁵ Notably not exclusively addressing these students: A respective dummy variable was estimated throughout insignificantly.

¹⁶ And/or students not enrolled in economics such as students of history, sociology, geography, etc.

¹⁷ The subtle problem that arises is that those instructors who dress better, and whose photographs may thus be rated higher, might be the same people who take care to be organized in class, to come to class on time, etc., i.e. faculty members with ‘general’ qualities independent of their looks.

¹⁸ As lectures in the considered observation period are held by full professors only, the dummy also reflects the distinction between tenured and non-tenured instructor.

¹⁹ Details and descriptive statistics are given in Table 3b.

²⁰ Estimates including all course fixed effect dummies are available on request.