Accounting Faculty Earn Lower Teaching Ratings Because Their Classes Are Perceived as Being More Difficult

• In Event: Evaluating the PCAOB, the instructor, the textbook, and the auditor.
  In Dialogue Session: Evaluating the PCAOB, the Instructor, the Textbook, and the Auditor.

Abstract

Most business school performance reviews and university level tenure and promotion decisions use student evaluations of teaching ability as part of the faculty evaluation process. The use of a common evaluation form across disciplines within the university inevitably invites comparisons of teaching ratings across disciplines by performance review committees. This study examines two important related issues; first, whether accounting professor ratings are systematically lower than ratings for professors teaching in other disciplines and second, if those lower ratings are associated with student’s perceptions of the relative easiness or difficulty of classes being rated. Using faculty rating data from RateMyProfessor.com, statistical test results indicate that student attitudes towards the relative easiness of classes and the physical attractiveness of professors are both positively related to faculty teaching ratings. Results also indicate that students perceive accounting professors and classes as significantly more difficult (less easy) than students in most non-accounting disciplines and that student perceptions of greater difficulty in accounting classes is responsible for significantly lower teaching evaluations for accounting. The results should be of interest to any accounting faculty member who is preparing annual review documents or promotion and/or tenure applications and is required to include student generated faculty evaluations in their applications.

Authors

• Richard Constand, University of West Florida

• R. Daniel Pace, University of West Florida

• Nicholas Clarke, University of West Florida