This study examines the ideology of Neoliberal education manifested in Ratemyprofessors.com’s mission, rating criteria, and students’ comments. College education is commodified, from which students are expecting a high return rate for their time and money invested. Such ideology promotes a hostile relationship between students and professors.
https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2FRatemyprofessors.com&data=02%7C01%7Cyuh156%40psu.edu%7Ca97b60d73b71441b14cc08d73a115401%7C7cf48d453ddb4389a9c1c115526eb52e%7C0%7C1%7C637041718406996728&sdata=b9yuDPgBNFS56IRJcv40zoR%2F1GNFuBVq0sNaK%2BhsCqY%3D&reserved=0 (RMP) allows university students to rate the quality of their professors' teaching, which supposedly helps other website users to select classes and professors. While existing research focuses mostly on RMP’s validity and its impact on students' and professors' behaviors (e.g., Felton et al., 2004; Coladarci &Kornfield, 2007; Kowai-Bell et al., 2012), this study aims to investigate RMP through the lens of neoliberal psychology. Using Vygotskian macro cultural psychology as our framework (Ratner, 2012), we examine RMP’s mission, rating criteria and prompts, promotion materials, and students' comments of two highest- and two lowest-rated professors from a large northwest university. Preliminary findings highlight that college education is commodified and that professors are paid service providers; students strive to obtain good grades with the lowest opportunity cost and expectation of the highest return rates, considering their investment of money, effort, and time. Education and learning under the influence of such psychology is understood not as promoting artificial development of cognitive abilities (Vygotsky, 1997); rather, it becomes an effort made to draw on available resources to navigate through academia with the goal of individual entrepreneurial success. In addition, our data indicate that RMP promotes a hostile relationship between the students and professors when professors are viewed as antagonists who could create an impediment for students’ individual entrepreneurial development, instead of a mediator of concept learning and personality development. Although our focus is on the sociocultural level psychology, we will also discuss potential solutions or recommendations on improving the current situation on the micro level, e.g., what we as instructors or professors can do.
