 They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If the beholder is your student, it may well pay if they think you're good-looking.
In a study examining the links between looks and college course ratings, two researchers at the University of Texas found classes conducted by attractive professors were more likely to win top marks from students. In their study, "Beauty in the Classroom: Professors' Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity," Daniel Hamermesh and Amy Parker note student course ratings are often a factor in setting salaries, suggesting looks might affect pay. While they do not claim student ratings are necessarily good benchmarks of a teacher's classroom productivity, Hamermesh and Parker say their findings "leave little doubt" perceived good looks do indeed drive up the scores. The study was recently posted on the Web site of the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research. The researchers chose six students -- three men and three women -- to judge the looks of 94 University of Texas faculty members and examined ratings on 463 courses those professors had taught. "The effects of differences in beauty on the average course rating are not small," they found. They also discovered minority faculty received lower evaluations than majority professors and that non-native English speakers fared worse than natives, which they said could either signal discrimination by students or reflect difficulties those teachers have transmitting knowledge. Hamermesh and Parker say the biggest question arising from their research is whether students are discriminating against less-attractive professors or whether they actually learn less from them. "What if students simply pay more attention to good-looking professors and learn more?" they ask rhetorically. "We would argue that this is a productivity effect." Still, they admit it's tough to parse fully why better-looking professors rate higher. "Disentangling whether this outcome represents productivity or discrimination is ... probably impossible." (Agencies) | 俗话说：情人眼里出西施。如果这"情人"是你的学生，并且他们认为你很漂亮，你就会得到很多好处。 德克萨斯大学的两位研究员进行了一项调查，分析长相与大学课程评估之间的关系。他们发现那些长相迷人的教授执教的课程更容易从学生那里得到高分。 在他们这项名为"教室中的美：教授的美丽和假定教育生产力"的研究中，丹尼尔·汉默麦希和埃米·帕克提到学生对课程的评分往往是决定教授薪水的一个因素，这就意味着长相可能会影响收入。 尽管他们没有断言学生的评价一定是衡量教师课堂生产力的有效尺度，汉默麦希和帕克说他们的发现无疑说明看得见的美貌确实有助于提高得分。 这项研究最近发表在权威的国家经济研究局网站上。 研究员们选择了六名学生，三男三女，让他们来评判德克萨斯大学94名教师的长相，并调查了那些教授们所承担的463门课程的评分情况。 他们发现："长相的差异对课程平均得分影响不小。" 他们同时发现对少数民族教授的评价比大多数教授要低，英语不是母语的教授待遇比本地人低。他们说这种现象要么体现了学生的偏见，要么反映了那些教师们传授知识时遇到了麻烦。 汉默麦希和帕克说他们研究中发现的最大的问题是：学生们到底是歧视长相不够好看的教授，还是确实从他们那里学到的东西比较少。 "如果学生们真的更注意长相漂亮的教授并且能够学到更多的东西，那怎么办呢？"他们反问到。"我们会认为这就是生产效率。" 尽管如此，他们承认很难全面的解析为什么长相较好的教授得到的评价较高。"要弄清楚这调查结果体现的是生产力还是偏见……也许不太可能。" （中国日报网站译） |
Updated: 2003-07-30 01:00
