Greg of En Banc links a short paper on the economics of student evaluation forms. Ole Miss just transitioned from paper “bubble sheet” forms handed out in-class to an opt-in online system somehow tied into our all-knowing but completely-screwed-up SAP campus management system.

Last I heard, compliance with the evaluation procedure was sharply lower—something I think would lead to a non-random error that biases responses downward, as students who disliked a class will probably be more likely to bother filling out the evaluations. On the upside, at least you don’t have to keep the original copies of the evaluations around for the written comments—which is a good thing, since the university managed to shred one semesters’ worth of evaluations a couple of years back, making those written comments lost to history.