School-culture-comparisons are one advantage of the BA -> MA -> PhD track of perpetual studenthood. And at every Higher Ed. institution I’ve attended, at some point, someone has made a common observation: In general, it seems that more students call their female professors by their first names, while referring to male professors as Dr. So-and-so.
It’s a subtle difference, but it has been a fairly consistent trend. There can be many reasons for this difference—some say male professors come off as more distant, or that female professors are more approachable and more frequently ask their students to use their first names—but the point is that there’s a definite difference.
NPR recently did a story about the work of Bennjamin Schmidt, a professor at Northeastern University, who created a database of reviews from Ratemyprofessors.com, a popular site where students can (you guessed it) rate their professors. Schmidt’s database allows you to type in any word to see how often it’s used in reviews of male vs. female professors by subject area. For example, here’s the chart for the word “funny.” Continue reading “Rating Instructors by Gender”
