Have you ever left a bad class and wondered, why couldn’t someone have warned me that my professor sucks?
Well, Kasey Kerber pondered this question after a particularly horrific class, and in his search for an answer, he began MyProfessorSucks.com.
An interactive website, MyProfessorSucks.com gives college students across the U.S. and Canada the opportunity to vent their unhealthy frustration, or spread the good news, about their very own “special” professor.
Launched in Feb. 2001, MyProfessorSucks.com was created based on Kerber’s inspiration to minimize the chances of his fellow peers getting pinned with dull, exceptionally bad instructors.
“I got back from class one day and remembered thinking, ‘I wish there was a way I could have known what this professor was like before signing up for this class…” said Kerber.
Due to the success of Kerber’s student run website, MyProfessorSucks.com now includes over 3000 colleges, universities, and trade schools, including Temple, allowing students to submit formal evaluations of their professors by grading their work in three categories: the instructor’s coolness, the ease of the class, and the class’ worth.
The cumulative grade, calculated by averaging these three factors, results in the professor’s overall score, ranging from an A+ to an F.
Despite its controversial domain name, the majority of evaluations posted on MyProfessorSucks.com are positive, rather than derogatory, towards the professors reviewed.
“It was about creating a resource to help students choose the best classes, word of mouth, online…Roughly 60 to 70 percent of all evaluations are positive in nature,” said Kerber.
Professors that receive positive evaluations with a grade of B+ or higher are placed into the A+ club, a section of the website which recognizes the best college instructors in the U.S. and Canada, as decided by their students.
“We have 1900+ professors on the A+ club,” Kerber states, “which means they have an average grade of a B+ or better.”
If it seems a bit miscalculated that a B+ professor would gain acceptance into the A+ club, the website justifies this in simple terms: “…we grade on a curve.”
The website also includes features such as “Just Ask Ross”, a question and answer forum in which students seek the advice of Ross, a site director, in all areas ranging from relationship dilemmas to “My professor scratches himself often…should I send him a note?”
“Kasey on College” is a column through which the founder himself narrates various, and often hilarious, situations that he encounters while attending the University of Nebraska at Lincoln as a graduate student.
Aside from the evaluations, the site also includes downloads, classified ads, and the opportunity for students to win one of more that 1212 prizes as detailed in challenges such as the calls and condoms competition.
The contest gives students the opportunity to win prepaid calling cards and condoms by posting assessments of their professors.
In the future, Kerber and his staff plan on adding features to the website which will include games, bulletin boards, email addresses ending in “MyProfessorSucks.com” and much more.
“I think it will really be surprising for users to see just how much we will change by the time we reach our second anniversary,” said Kerber.
Coryn Brown can be reached at McButtaflyz@aol.com
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