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Scott Jaschik writes at Inside Higher Education that although most faculty members would deny that physical appearance is a legitimate criterion in grading, a study finds that among similarly qualified female students, those who are physically attractive earn better grades than less attractive female students. For male students, there is no significant relationship between attractiveness and grades. The results hold true whether the faculty member is a man or a woman.
The researchers obtained student identification photographs for students at Metropolitan State University of Denver and had the attractiveness rated, on a scale of 1-10, of all the students. Then they examined 168,092 course grades awarded to the students, using factors such as ACT scores to control for student academic ability. For female students, an increase of one standard deviation in attractiveness was associated with a 0.024 increase in grade (on a 4.0 scale).
The results mirror a similar study that found that those who are attractive in high school are more likely to go on to earn a four-year college degree. Hernández-Julián says that he found the results of the Metro State study “troubling” and says that there are two possible explanations: “Is it that professors invest more time and energy into the better-looking students, helping them learn more and earn the higher grades? Or do professors simply reward the appearance with higher grades given identical performance? The likely answer, given our growing understanding of the prevalence of implicit biases, is that professors make small adjustments on both of these margins."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday January 07 2016, @08:19PM
There's another technique that was successfully pulled off at my alma mater. Students suspected a particular prof was favoring male students over female students, so they worked out a plan (with the help of the dept chair, I think) where some of the male and female students swapped papers to see what happened. And when they did that, the male students continued to get A's (despite turning in the C students' work) while the female students were getting C's (despite turning in the A students' work). Unfortunately, the prof in question had tenure, so rather than fire him they created a system where he can't know which student submitted which paper.
I suspect a women's studies prof did the same thing to me (I'm a straight man, which I suspect was relevant). My tipoff was the strangest response on an academic paper I have ever received: "This was really well thought out and well-written. B-" And my female classmates weren't seeing anything similar. But since I wasn't intending to major in women's studies, just interested in getting some distribution credits, I didn't really pursue the matter.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.