 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) | 俗話說：情人眼里出西施。如果這"情人"是你的學生，并且他們認為你很漂亮，你就會得到很多好處。 德克薩斯大學的兩位研究員進行了一項調查，分析長相與大學課程評估之間的關系。他們發現那些長相迷人的教授執教的課程更容易從學生那里得到高分。 在他們這項名為"教室中的美：教授的美麗和假定教育生產力"的研究中，丹尼爾·漢默麥希和埃米·帕克提到學生對課程的評分往往是決定教授薪水的一個因素，這就意味著長相可能會影響收入。 盡管他們沒有斷言學生的評價一定是衡量教師課堂生產力的有效尺度，漢默麥希和帕克說他們的發現無疑說明看得見的美貌確實有助于提高得分。 這項研究最近發表在權威的國家經濟研究局網站上。 研究員們選擇了六名學生，三男三女，讓他們來評判德克薩斯大學94名教師的長相，并調查了那些教授們所承擔的463門課程的評分情況。 他們發現："長相的差異對課程平均得分影響不小。" 他們同時發現對少數民族教授的評價比大多數教授要低，英語不是母語的教授待遇比本地人低。他們說這種現象要么體現了學生的偏見，要么反映了那些教師們傳授知識時遇到了麻煩。 漢默麥希和帕克說他們研究中發現的最大的問題是：學生們到底是歧視長相不夠好看的教授，還是確實從他們那里學到的東西比較少。 "如果學生們真的更注意長相漂亮的教授并且能夠學到更多的東西，那怎么辦呢？"他們反問到。"我們會認為這就是生產效率。" 盡管如此，他們承認很難全面的解析為什么長相較好的教授得到的評價較高。"要弄清楚這調查結果體現的是生產力還是偏見……也許不太可能。" （中國日報網站譯） |
Updated: 2003-07-30 01:00
