The search for the perfect professor has come to an end.

“Best teacher you will ever have,” boasted one student. “I highly recommend him,” said another.

Thanks to the comments left by these Loyola students on the increasingly popular professor ratings Web site RateMyProfessors.com, others can now register for a class taught by philosophy professor Dittmar Dittrich with confidence and the chance to witness the so-called “best teacher ever” in academic action.

As registration for summer and fall classes kicks off in the upcoming weeks, students will be crowding more than the LORA server and advising offices. With more than 6.6 million ratings posted for more than 900,000 college professors in the United States, Canada, England and Wales, the Web site receives more than 10 million college student hits each year.

Since 1999, RateMyProfessors.com, the brainchild of California-spawned software engineer John Swapceinski, has offered students an opportunity to post feedback and ratings of professors from their respective universities through a five-point ratings process, with five being the highest on a scale of one to five.

Students judge professors on easiness, helpfulness, clarity and the student rater’s interest in the class during class registration.

In January 2007, RateMyProfessors.com joined mtvU, a division of the Viacom subsidiary MTV, which also owns the College Publisher network, a network of more than 500 online university publications. The site is now part of one of the largest student-trafficked online networks, according to MTV.

“I didn’t know the site existed until I asked my students, ‘What made you come to this class?'” Dittirich recalled. “One student responded, ‘I looked you up.'”

Once the student mentioned the site to his professor, Dittrich browsed it for himself and discovered what many students are offering their peers.

“This should be a helpful tool. It is a logical extension of an opinion, and because it’s anonymous it has the potential to be objective,” he said. “It’s insightful for the student. You can only offer short lines and can’t say much, so it’s like an endorsement.”

Unlike the student evaluations professors ask students to fill out toward the end of each semester, RateMyProfessors.com is public and, yes, even your professors may sneak in and observe the polite praises or full-scale wars you offer them.

ON THEIR RADAR

Though you may have hoped you could hide from the eyes of your professors, Loyola’s administration “has known about it for years,” according to English professor Kate Adams.

“It’s a good orientation to see how people feel, see what they wouldn’t tell you in person,” said Dittrich, who feels the site may give professors a chance to “sit in on gossip.”

“Evaluations are kept between the professor, the chair and the dean,” Adams said. “Students have a right to that information, and they’re getting it from the Web to meet the needs of those not being met in other ways. They have nothing else.”

“Evaluations help the instructor, but it might not help other students,” added Dittrich.

But the comments left on the site “should not have any weight on how a teacher is viewed,” Adams said.

A VOICE FOR ALL

Despite the entertaining voyeurism and water cooler-esque conversations of the site, students are swearing by it.

History freshman Faa’izah Drewry found the site through a friend during her first semester and said she plans to continue checking ratings of potential professors before registering in the upcoming semesters.

“It’s how I schedule my classes,” she said.

Lyna Nguyen, finance and accounting sophomore, admits using the site every semester, though she doesn’t contribute to the posts. “I read the comments, and I find them pretty fair.”

Despite receiving heavy criticism and multiple class action lawsuits from wary professors and administrators, the site reports that more than 65 percent of the ratings are positive.

“I feel it’s about 50-50. There are a lot of good observations, but a lot of people are inclined to say bad things about their professor,” said business sophomore Robert Swanton. “I can tell which ones are genuine, and which ones were from dissatisfaction.”

But for professors, reading a few harsh words can translate into a serious dilemma.

“The problem with the Web is that if what someone is saying is not actual, there’s no recourse for action,” said Adams. “There could be suspicion or concern once certain claims are made … it’s life-changing whether or not it’s true”

“Anyone can post something, and they could try to harm you, so you have to take that into account,” said Dittrich.

Though RateMyProfessors.com only accepts comments from users enabling cookies and tracking IP addresses to keep track of the number of ratings designated for each professor, users can still find loopholes to get back at their red pen-wielding professors or former crushes. After all, users don’t really need to be students in order to register to comment.

Dittrich suggested that, although relatively anonymous, the site might make otherwise quiet and reserved students outspoken, questioning how representative the ratings are.

“Nothing is statistically valid on any Internet survey,” Adams said. “It’s in need of basic surveying techniques.”

SMILE – IT’S NOT SO BAD

Though many faculty members may be skeptical of the online student voice, Dittrich said professors shouldn’t be surprised upon seeing an open forum available to a mass student body.

In fact, those professors may be surprised to see that more than half of the 228 professors listed in the Loyola RateMyProfessors.com database have a yellow smiley face next to their names, an indicator of their high ratings and positive comments.

Nearly a third of the professors listed have the Web site’s calling card, the infamous chili pepper, an indicator for a professor’s “hotness” factor, next to their name.

If Loyola students can find a variety of highly-recommended and attractive professors in their online quest for the perfect professor, RateMyProfessors.com may be on the verge of a new slogan: “The search is over.”

Alex Woodward can be reached at [email protected].