The Dhaka University Students’ Union has launched a website to evaluate teachers at Dhaka University and has promoted the initiative quite widely. From what I have been able to gather from newspaper reports, the idea is straightforward: students will evaluate teachers, and the results of those evaluations will remain public. Ducsu says it had raised the issue of teacher evaluation with the university administration several times. Since the administration did not move forward, it decided to take the initiative itself.
At first glance, this may seem perfectly reasonable. An elected student union is trying to introduce a system for evaluating teachers. But if we look only at the initiative itself and ignore the context in which it is taking place, we miss the larger problem.
One thing should be clear from the outset. Every university should have a system of teacher evaluation. Under such an official system, students should evaluate a teacher after completing a course but before the final results are published. They should be able to comment on how well the teacher taught, whether classes were held on time, how accessible the teacher was, and their overall experience of the course. That evaluation should be available to the department chair. The purpose is to place teachers within a proper feedback structure where there is room for continuous improvement.
There is no question about the need for teacher evaluation. The problem is who should be responsible for it.
That responsibility belongs to the academic departments and the university administration. It does not belong to Ducsu . Ducsu has said that it raised the demand with the university administration. It could have continued to push that demand. It could have organised further programmes or taken other steps to pressure the university into introducing such a system. But taking the responsibility upon itself is, in my view, beyond its jurisdiction.
Some may argue that similar systems exist in many other countries. That is true. At the American university where I am currently doing my research, I have seen how the process works.
I teach two sections of the same course. Before the course ends, and before final grades are released, students are required to complete an evaluation of the instructor. In my experience, students have to complete the survey before they can see their grades. If there are thirty students in a class, all thirty are expected to complete the evaluation.
One point is especially important: the evaluation takes place before students see their final grades. The reason is obvious. If a student is very happy or very unhappy with a grade, that may influence how they evaluate the teacher.
There is also a parallel, unofficial system. If I search online, I sometimes come across small platforms such as “Rate My Professor” and similar websites. I do not even know who runs most of them. A few students may write about their experience in a course or about a particular faculty member. But these platforms are unofficial. They have no connection with the university’s formal feedback system, and the university does not treat them as part of its evaluation process.
Research on teacher evaluation in the United States has also pointed to serious weaknesses. Evaluations can be shaped by racism, gender bias, and other forms of prejudice. But there is also a certain degree of maturity in the system. A significant number of students do try to respond honestly. Of course, this varies from one context to another. I would not call it a universally perfect system, but there is at least a genuine attempt to create a meaningful feedback structure.
The discussion becomes different in Bangladesh because the context is completely different.
If we assume that something used in Europe or the United States can simply be introduced in Bangladesh and work in exactly the same way, that assumption is usually wrong. The reality is that Bangladeshi universities have teacher politics on one side and student politics on the other. Teachers can be deeply partisan, and students can be partisan as well. When students evaluate a teacher, the teacher’s political or religious position may easily become part of that judgement.
I was a student at Dhaka University myself. I remember one teacher who taught very well. But some students strongly disliked him and said all sorts of things about him. The reason was simple: he gave low marks.
I can also remember another teacher who barely taught in class. He would often arrive late and leave early. But students were happy with him because he gave very little work and awarded high marks. To many students, that made him a good teacher.
Students who were active in political groups often judged teachers in another way as well. They cared about which political camp a teacher belonged to.
So what happens if, in this kind of environment, an elected student union introduces a system in which ratings are made public and remain publicly available?
It can easily become a way of creating an online mob and interfering with academic freedom.
I am not saying that Dhaka University teachers should not be evaluated. Of course they should be. Not only at Dhaka University, but across all universities in Bangladesh, teachers should be part of a proper evaluation and feedback system. And it is the responsibility of the university administration to ensure that.
But we have to ask what the purpose of such a system is.
Is the purpose to improve teaching by placing teachers within a structured feedback process? Or is the purpose to take the whole thing online, make it public, and then create an online mob against any teacher a particular group does not like?
Take the example of a teacher who teaches gender studies. In the Bangladeshi context, that teacher may have to discuss issues that some students see as conflicting with their religious beliefs or cultural values. If those students then rate the teacher, are they likely to separate their ideological disagreement from the quality of teaching?
Probably not.
The teacher can then be publicly presented as someone with a poor rating, even though the rating may have very little to do with teaching quality.
Or take another example. A teacher may be strict about exam marks. If students evaluate that teacher after results have already been published, how fair or reasonable will that evaluation be? In a proper evaluation structure, the process should be completed before results are released precisely so that satisfaction or dissatisfaction with grades does not shape the response.
I taught at at least three private universities in Bangladesh, two part-time and one full-time. Two of those universities are among the largest in the country in terms of student numbers. They had teacher evaluation systems. Every course I taught was evaluated. After each course, I had to sit with the department chair and discuss the evaluation. My colleagues did the same. Later, when we applied for annual salary increments or promotion, evaluations from different semesters had to be collected and submitted together. My colleagues did not know how students had rated me. The chair I reported to knew, and that confidentiality was maintained. At the same time, I learned from students what I was doing well and where I was making mistakes. That is the point of feedback.
But if the same process is turned into a public rating exercise and used to create an online mob, what happens? Teachers become less willing to accept feedback because the process no longer feels developmental. It starts to feel punitive.
What Ducsu has done, in my view, is a political initiative. We are already seeing a new kind of aggressive influence taking shape across Dhaka University and other universities in Bangladesh. In many cases, Shibir is at the centre of that influence. This student organisation has its own positions on religion, history, and politics. When it comes to views outside those positions, there have been attempts to vilify people through different means. We have seen similar developments at Rajshahi University. Chittagong University receives much less attention, perhaps because it is far from the capital. At Dhaka University, however, the pattern is already visible.
Ducsu’s teacher-rating initiative, in my view, is part of that same pattern.
Ultimately, such a system can make women teachers, progressive teachers, and teachers who hold or express different views more vulnerable to organised targeting. Student organisations also have the capacity to do this. It would not be difficult for them to tell their supporters how to use a teacher evaluation system as a weapon.
Being elected does not make every initiative taken by Ducsu automatically legitimate.
As an elected body, Ducsu has a responsibility to advocate for students. It also has a responsibility to pressure the university administration to introduce a proper system of teacher evaluation.
But pressuring the university to do its job and taking that job upon itself are two very different things.
When students themselves take over the responsibility of evaluating teachers, especially in a highly politicised environment and where there may be a larger political purpose behind the initiative, that purpose should certainly be questioned.
Asif Bin Ali is a doctoral fellow at Georgia State University, USA. He can be reached at [email protected].
