BYU professors rank No. 3 on RateMyProfessors.com

PROVO — After every semester at BYU, Kaylie Stephens goes to RateMyProfessors.com to evaluate her learning experience.

The 20-year-old from Sandy joins millions of other college students around the nation who go on the MTV-owned site to rate their professors on helpfulness, clarity, ease of the class and even on hotness.

For the past few years, BYU has been in the top 10 for overall quality of teachers on RateMyProfessors.com. This year, BYU ranks No. 3 — up seven spots from last year.

"They bring in different sides to teaching," Stephens said of BYU professors. "You can also tell they love what they teach."

Topping BYU professors in the online rankings were Southeastern Louisiana University professors at No. 1 and John Jay College of Criminal Justice professors at No. 2. Other universities with high-rated faculties included the University of North Carolina, Arizona State University and the University of Delaware.

There are 6,500-plus schools on RateMyProfessors.com, with more than 1 million professors and 10 million opinions, making it the most popular college-professor-ranking site in the nation, according to site officials.

BYU has 2,771 professors listed on the site, including 258 with a perfect score of 5.0 in overall quality and only 23 with a 1.0 — the lowest score possible.

BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said people have to be careful about taking the rankings as fact, as it is all based on opinions.

But Jeffrey Humpherys, an associate professor of mathematics, said BYU emphasizes quality of teaching more than other colleges where he has taught. Quality of teaching is weighted heavily in deciding whether a BYU professor gets tenure, Humpherys said.

On the other hand, the accuracy of the site is sometimes questionable, he said. Humpherys said he has found that students who wait a couple months after they take a difficult math class from him rate him much higher than students who rate him in the middle of the semester when they perhaps are upset about a certain assignment.

"Students sometimes don't realize how important the class was to them until one or two years later," he said.

Chelsea Chandler, a BYU senior from California, checks RateMyProfessors.com before every semester to help her decide which classes to take. Chandler said she usually can pick out the evaluations that were made by students who were just bitter about their grades in a class by the comments they make next to their rating.

The comments, she said, are most helpful to her in deciding which teacher to take a class from, as they often explain more about a professor's teaching style. And Chandler has found the rankings to be pretty accurate.

While many BYU students say their professors deserve the No. 3 national ranking, others argue that the number may be inflated by overly positive students.

Julieann Ray, a freshman from Las Vegas, said BYU students may be more likely to be nice when rating professors than other college students. Ray, too, uses the site, but she said talking to people who previously have taken a class from a professor is more helpful.

e-mail: slenz@desnews.com