Professors cannot accurately assess teaching effectiveness because student evaluations conflate popularity with pedagogical quality

Academics struggle to improve their teaching because student evaluations are used for tenure and promotion decisions (summative purposes) rather than for genuine feedback and improvement (formative purposes). Current evaluation systems incentivize professors to inflate grades and entertain rather than challenge students, making it impossible to distinguish between effective teaching and likability. This creates a broken feedback loop where poor teachers receive high scores and good teachers who demand rigor receive low scores, with no reliable mechanism to actually improve instruction.