Writer Demands 'Confy Guides' To Grade Teachers

An article in the February issue of Harper's Magazine praises Harvard's student-written "Confidential Guide to Courses" as an effective means of condemning professors that spend too much time on the road, and too little time at home teaching their courses.

John Fischer, editor-in-chief of Harper's, says that there is a growing suspicion among college students that they are being "gypped" by their teachers, that the men whose salaries they pay show little concern for undergraduate education.

Salaries of university professors, Fischer continues, should be determined by "collective student judgement...along with other factors, including research and publications."

A Confy Guide type of student evaluation, compiled from student polls, is suggested by Fischer as a way to express student opinion about their teachers. Students, he says have proved in the Confy Guide and in similar publications at other colleges that they can be fair minded, discriminating judges of professorial ability.

Fischer also recommends that the large universities adopt Swarthmore's system of experts from outside the college giving course examinations. He said this would provide a greater cohesion between faculty and students and would tend to reward those professors whose students performed well.