A Longitudinal Study of the Relationship between Students' Final Grade and their Evaluation of Professors' Teaching in the Next Semesters

Student evaluation of professors is one of the common tools of universities to improve the quality of teaching in classrooms. Since in Iran's higher education system, student evaluations are used for annual promotion, contract extension or change of status, and the promotion of professors' scientific rank, the correct analysis and interpretation of the results of these evaluations is of foremost importance. This longitudinal research, which is a panel study, has analyzed the relationship between students' grades and their teacher's evaluation in the following semesters. The statistical population of the research was made up of more than 200,000 pairs of "Student's Final Grade-Teacher's Evaluation Grade" which were obtained from students in the conditions of face-to-face education before the pandemic. After conditioning and sifting the data, the final analysis has been done on the grades-evaluations of 3098 students during four semesters as a research sample. The regression analysis of the random effects model showed that with a one-unit increase in the final grade of the student, his/her evaluation grade of the teacher's teaching in the next semesters increases by about five percent. Additional analyzes showed that the grade can create a special mental attitude in the student, which can affect the student's evaluation of the professor even three semesters later. It seems that university administrators, educational councils, and university admissions boards should revise the guidelines for calculating and interpreting data from student evaluations, taking into account the various consequences of grade inflation at the university level.