"There is no Yelp for education" says IAVA chief. Well, HN, is there?

[moge]

Full clip: relevant part starts at 8:10.

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-rachel-maddow-show/48603715#48603715

IAVA = Iraq and Afganistan Veterans for America

As a veteran and an entrepreneur this struck a cord with me and thought I'd share it. Seems like a ripe market. I'm not sure if there is, in fact, a 'Yelp' for education if there is they should reach out to veterans.

[keiferski]

RateMyProfessors is the first thing that comes to mind.

Unfortunately, I don't think a 1-to-1 Yelp model for education would work, as RateMyProf would seem to show. A good restaurant is easy to determine: the food is good or it isn't. Universities and students, unfortunately, aren't that simple. Students usually give good reviews to easy teachers, which multiplied across the system, results in lowered standards for everyone.

[_delirium → keiferski]

A particular problem is that the reviews don't have much hindsight, because they're mostly filed by students currently in a course, or those who just completed one.

I believe I could now say with reasonable confidence who my better undergraduate professors were, and who the worse ones were. But if you had asked me to rate each professor during or immediately after the course, I would have made different choices, which in retrospect were probably not the right ones. It's very hard to evaluate introductory courses, in particular, until you get a few more courses in, and realize that some laid a good foundation while others didn't.