Introducing the `Professor Evaluation Site`

``2 points for degree of difficulty, 1 point for availability, 1 point for clarity, 2 points for popularity. Professor, please pay more attention to your teaching.``

Professors are getting anxious these days. This is because students are publicly evaluating professors on an internet site. Professors are looking to address the situation directly which will increase criticism of the site.

The culprit of the controversy is the site www.edurating.com which opened on September 29. Currently, 908 high school and college students are members of the site and they are publicly evaluating courses and classes on the net, using the actual school and professor names.

The `report cards` are similar to school life records, citing professor name, school, grades (teaching area average score, total average score, additional comments). Students divide the evaluation in four categories of `difficulty` `availability` `clarity` `popularity` with 5 being the highest score. Just as professors write up a comprehensive evaluation for students, the students write up a comprehensive assessment.

Professors cannot hide their panic over this new site and are looking into filing a suit on defamation charges.

One professor Kim in a Seoul high school said, ``This is like a slap to our faces when our backs are already pushed to the wall with all the stress over promotion, bonus, rank, and pay. I feel like the tradition of `not even stepping on the shadow of your teacher` fell apart overnight.``

``To publicly evaluate professors on an internet site when the evaluation categories and standards have not been verified is defamation. We will discuss the matter with other professors and even look into filing a lawsuit.`` said one professor Lee at S girls high school who had been evaluated on the site.

An employee who works for company A which runs the site said, ``The teacher evaluation site will help professors improve their teaching. Over criticisms and vulgar comments are removed by the webmaster, so there should not be any issue of defamation.``

Park Yang-Suk parky@donga.com