Officials with the University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University say a new state law likely will impact their bottom lines.

Like other public colleges and universities, UNT and TWU must publish evaluations of faculty members by students, course syllabi and faculty resumes on their websites to comply with a new law that goes into effect this fall.

However, with the 2011 Legislature projecting a budget shortfall of up to $18 billion, the extra costs of gathering and disseminating that information could pinch universities’ budgets.

Interim TWU Provost Keith McFarland said only time will tell if the new law is effective.

“We’ll just have to follow it closely as we do it; at this point, it’s the law and we’re going to be in compliance with the law,” McFarland said.

TWU has contracted with a Kansas-based company for about $30,000 a year for the faculty evaluations, he said. That cost could grow because the company bills based on how many evaluations it conducts per class section.

Since the law was an unfunded mandate, universities must make room in their budgets for the expense.

UNT Provost Warren Burggren said the task of collecting the documents and putting them online likely will take a significant number of man-hours. The task would be like publishing a city phone book for university staff, he said.

“There’s a cost,” Burggren said, “but whether it’s worth the cost or not, we’ll have to look at a real product and a real outcome and see after a year or two.”

Officials also speculated about how much students will benefit from the published information.

J. Martyn Gunn, vice provost for academic services at Texas A&M University, said he doesn’t think students will benefit from the new law.

“We’re faced with laying off faculty in the next biennium to meet the budget cuts, and here we are spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars to implement this,” Gunn said.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, said the goal is to better inform university students about their education, one of life’s largest investments.

She said she hopes the additional information will make students less likely to drop classes.

“Change is difficult,” Kolkhorst said. “But I think this is fair and good for the consumer. We want more consumers, more kids going to college.”

State Rep. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, said the state mandate will provide more transparency and much-needed consumer information for students selecting courses.

Parker said that when that the bill was approved last year, lawmakers were told that universities would be able to adhere to the mandate without spending additional state resources.

“When this legislation was considered in the Texas House, the Legislative Budget Board reported that this bill would not incur any additional cost to the state or a state agency,” Parker said in a written statement.

State Rep. Myra Crownover, R-Denton, said there are good intentions behind the bill but the Legislature doesn’t want to micromanage universities or create more costs.

“We want our students to make wise choices, for the best uses of their time, credit hours and the best use of their money,” Crownover said. “But something like this — it’s a good idea, but in action, sometimes it doesn’t play out quite the way you wished it would.”

Teaching for good evaluations

Student evaluations aren’t new, and consumer-driven websites have operated for some time, offering college students the ability to anonymously rate their professors and the courses they teach.

But there’s often a correlation between students’ grades and the evaluations they give professors, said Scott Carrell, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis.

Often, high-rating professors produce students who perform poorly in future curricula and are unable to move forward in advanced courses, he said.

“Students reward professors that teach to get a good grade, versus professors that provide deep learning or allow students to struggle with the material,” Carrell said. “Our conclusion is that the practice of using student evaluations to rate a professor is suspect and making the data publicly available … could have consequences for long-term learning.”

But university faculty said they won’t likely be swayed by the grades their students give them.

Gus Seligmann, a longtime UNT history professor, said he wouldn’t be watering down his syllabus for better student evaluations this fall.

“The grade doesn’t seem to make much of a difference,” Seligmann said. “I read all my evaluations, and this batch was no different. Some students really like the way I teach, and some students don’t like the way I teach. The difference is, I like the way I teach, so I don’t pay much attention.”

Seligmann said student evaluations have always been a mixed bag during his tenure and are extremely subjective.

The UNT Faculty Senate passed a resolution last year opposing the mandatory student evaluations of teachers, after evaluations were first implemented on the campus.

UNT professor Jincheng Du said that more important than his students’ actual grade was for them to understand the intricacies of science and engineering in his materials science courses.

“We want to get a good response from students, but to me and fellow faculty [members], the first thing required is for students to learn,” he said.

A push for education

While there is a cost to measure education, the additional information on professors and courses at UNT could potentially attract students to the campus, Burggren, the provost, said.

The self-described “evolutionary Darwinist” said inferior syllabi and faculty could have severe consequences for a university. However, top-notch faculty members likely will step up when the documents are presented to students, Burggren said.

“There is a sense of, not competition, but that faculty absolutely needs to be on their game on these documents, and that’s not a bad thing,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889. Her e-mail address is ccarlisle@dentonrc.com.