Students see male professors as brilliant geniuses, female professors as bossy and annoying

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Using data collected from a popular forum for griping or raving about classes and college professors, a Northeastern University professor was able to clearly map out student biases in how they choose to rate their male and female instructors,ThinkProgress.org reported.

 

Benjamin Schmidt took data from from 14 million student reviews on RateMyProfessors.com. Schmidt broke down reviews, creating charts to sort which words are associated with each gender and discipline.

 

The results? “Men are more likely to be described as a star, knowledgeable, awesome or the best professor. Women are more likely to be described as bossy, disorganized, helpful, annoying or as playing favorites. Nice or rude are also more often used to describe women than men,” according to The New York Times. Students also will call their male professors “geniuses,” while female professors are far more likely to be called “feisty,” especially if they teach humanities classes.

 

Schmidt’s charts help illustrate student biases that are only beginning to come to light, according to ThinkProgress.org. Recent studies have shown students can possess an unconscious bias against female professors.

 

Slate.com reported that in one study, teachers graded and returned papers to students at the exact same time, but when asked to rate their promptness, students gave female professors lower scores than men.

 

Biases cut both ways – teachers have also been found to believe girls are not as good in math and science, even when they perform similarly to boys, The New York Times also reported