They
say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If the beholder is your
student, it may well pay if they think you're good-looking.
In a study examining the links between looks and college course
ratings, two researchers at the University of Texas found classes
conducted by attractive professors were more likely to win top marks
from students.
In their study, "Beauty in the Classroom: Professors'
Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity," Daniel
Hamermesh and Amy Parker note student course ratings are often a factor
in setting salaries, suggesting looks might affect pay.
While they do not claim student ratings are necessarily good
benchmarks of a teacher's classroom productivity, Hamermesh and Parker
say their findings "leave little doubt" perceived good looks
do indeed drive up the scores.
The study was recently posted on the Web site of the prestigious
National Bureau of Economic Research.
The researchers chose six students -- three men and three women -- to
judge the looks of 94 University of Texas faculty members and examined
ratings on 463 courses those professors had taught.
"The effects of differences in beauty on the average course
rating are not small," they found.
They also discovered minority faculty received lower evaluations than
majority professors and that non-native English speakers fared worse
than natives, which they said could either signal discrimination by
students or reflect difficulties those teachers have transmitting
knowledge.
Hamermesh and Parker say the biggest question arising from their
research is whether students are discriminating against less-attractive
professors or whether they actually learn less from them.
"What if students simply pay more attention to good-looking
professors and learn more?" they ask rhetorically. "We would
argue that this is a productivity effect."
Still, they admit it's tough to parse fully why better-looking
professors rate higher. "Disentangling whether this outcome
represents productivity or discrimination is ... probably
impossible."