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posted by n1 on Thursday January 07 2016, @03:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the extra-credit dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by http on Friday January 08 2016, @06:16AM

    by http (1920) on Friday January 08 2016, @06:16AM (#286489)

    It's easy to understand why those who doesn't "get" the {meta,} moderation systems would do that to you. Your posts regulary contain textbook examples of bigotry, misogyny, racism, and general all-around fuckery, but without any of the humour that EthanolFueled strives for. If they're an accurate reflection of your personality, your associates have done you a great disservice by not kicking you in the shins.

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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 08 2016, @02:53PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 08 2016, @02:53PM (#286620) Homepage Journal

    Interesting idea. May I ask who wrote these textbooks, to which you refer? SJW's, I presume. I prefer to think for myself, than you very much.

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    Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2016, @04:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2016, @04:07PM (#288189)

      > I prefer to think for myself, than you very much.

      I'd like to nominate this sentence for the "Best Context for Mis-typing 'Thank you very much'" category.