1/ So, this is interesting. In theory, this is laudable. But there are some aspects of academic politics/administration which should give people pause here (ht @LiisaGalea, btw)
2/ This is going to be portrayed as a victory for formative evaluation over (flawed) summative evaluation. And in some respects it is. But it may also end up loading the academic reward system even more heavily towards research.
3/ At least with a quantitative measure, you could be sure the data would somehow get used in tenure/pay/promotion decisions. Not much, obv. Only really in cases where research quality seen as being on margin. Take that element away, will teaching continue to have same weight?
4/ Yes, yes, quantitative measure was flawed b/c respondents biased on sex/ethnicity of prof. But it's trivially simple to create a method to statistically control for said bias if that's really the problem. That's not a killer argument against summative, quantitative data.
5/ One can still make an argument that formative > summative, of course. But that implies that profs will actually act on feedback. What reward mechanisms exist to ensure that they will do so?
6/ If there's no convincing answer that question, then good reason to believe profs may pay less attention to teaching as a result. And I can't see the upside in that.
7 (To be clear: many profs - most, probably - spend loads of time thinking about teaching and in main get good evals. That's not who we are talking about here. We're talking about sanctions/rewards for instructors of lesser/marginal ability. Let's not pretend they don't exist)
