How Student Evaluations of Teaching Affect Course Enrollment

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between student course evaluations and course selection by quantifying how changes in undergraduate course ratings correlate with changes in enrollments at a large research university in the northeastern United States. We find that an improvement in a course’s overall course rating (from year t-1 to year t) tends to be followed by an increase in a course’s enrollment (from year t to t+1). The magnitude of this effect differs by course type, with the strongest effect observed in the general curriculum and a smaller effect found in departmental courses. This supports other research that finds a correlation between unofficial course ratings and enrollments in general curriculum courses. We also find that an increase in a course’s difficulty rating (from year t-1 to year t) tends to be followed by a decrease in a course’s enrollment (from year t to t+1) for general curriculum courses, but not for departmental courses. Therefore, selection of general curriculum courses is much more sensitive to student evaluations than courses offered in a field of study.