Including Letters of Recommendation from Students in a Dossier?

A philosopher writes:

My colleagues and I are conducting a job search for a tenure-track position.  Several of the dossiers submitted to us have included letters of recommendation written by the job candidate's former students and speaking highly of the candidate's teaching ability.  This is a new phenomenon to us; we have conducted several searches in recent years and have never before encountered recommendation letters written by students.

Among my colleagues, opinion has been divided, with some feeling indifferent about the letters, and two feeling quite displeased about them.  (I suppose the negative reaction stems from worries about the job candidate cherry picking class favorites and soliciting letters from them, or even pressuring them into writing one.)

I wonder (a) how often your readers who have served on recent job search committees have encountered letters like this; and (b) what they have felt about such letters (did they hurt the candidate's chances, help them, or make no difference)?

My inclination is that it is a bad idea to include student letters of recommendation, since their probative value is extremely limited, certainly when compared to anonymous class evaluations.  What do readers think?

Comments

[Hans]

I don't see why this would be a bad idea. The query concerns student recommendations for a tenure-track position. But it's quite common for professors and administrators to solicit letters from students (both undergrads and grads) when faculty are up for tenure. If recommendations are sought at that level when a professor already has many years of teaching experience under her belt, it's hard to see why they can't also help a promising young professor at the tenure-track stage - especially (and perhaps this is the important point) when they are coupled with anonymous class evaluations. If evaluations that show good numbers are corroborated with good arguments from mature students, the letters only help distinguish a candidate in my view.

[Jennifer]

One of the tenure-track jobs that I applied for this year REQUIRED letters from students in my dossier. I thought this was a silly requirement and ignored the requirement, sending in the other requested materials. I was not shortlisted for the job. It's possible that my failure to comply hurt me in this case. But I thought the requirement was silly. I'm interested to hear what your readers think about this case. (The school was a private university in the South; the ad was in JFP in the fall)

[harry b]

Don't people cherry-pick their referees more generally?

I think it is a bad idea because it involves a kind of abuse of the professor-student relationship. That said, there is a practie for more senior hires of asking for the names of students one has taught so that the propsective employer can approach them for letters - but the candidate is, after that, out of the loop, so cannot have access to what the students qrote.

[Mohan Matthen]

The probative value of letters from academic colleagues and teachers generally derives from their content. When a professor gives a credible specific account of a job candidate's research contributions, it is taken seriously; when s/he offers unsupported or generic praise, it tends to be discounted even when it comes from a big name. The same criterion should be applied to letters from students. Of course, it is on the whole unlikely that a student, particularly an undergraduate in a lecture course, will have anything non-generic to say -- but information about how somebody helped shape their essay or get them into graduate school is surely relevant to how you assess them. Brian's advice should thus be qualified: include student letters only when they can provide credible information. As for search committees: Why not treat student letters in exactly the same way as you would other letters? My guess is that most will then be discounted -- but surely their very presence doesn't tell against a candidate.

[Hans]

Abuse of the professor-student relationship? Details please. It's not like these letters are coerced, especially when the semester's over and professor and students have parted ways. Departments can institute safeguards to ensure that job candidates don't have access to student recommendations, in the same way that things work with soliciting recommendations for tenured faculty. So I still don't see why this would be a bad thing. We're philosophers after all. If a letter contains overblown praise or seems forced, search committees should be able to discern this.

NB: this isn't to say that I think such letters should be required, as in Jennifer's case.

[Trent Dougherty]

I think there's an important difference between teachers who can consistently inspire some students and those who can't. I can't see anything silly or abusive about it (and I doubt that a very good case could be made that wouldn't apply at least almost equally well to standard practices. Maybe those standard practices are silly or abusive (and some peripheral ones seem to me to be, but not the core I'm talking about) but the case would have to be made).

[Mark]

Come on – there is such a clear conflict of interest here. You give a bad student a good grade, they give you a glowing reference, or just sign one you've written yourself . . . Moreover, the veracity of such references are far more difficult to ascertain than references from academics: you can't look up the student on the department website or contact them to find out if the reference stacks up. Anonymous student evaluations are the only thing anyone should put any stock in, and those too should be taken with salt.

[David Yamanishi]

Liberal arts colleges often ask for either student recommendations or a summary of or selected comments from student evaluations, although often at a later stage of the process than the initial application.

Research institutions often couldn't care less, it's true, but it seems a little ridiculous to be offended by the letters' presence.

Student letters don't necessarily have to be solicited. I've generally made a practice of indicating to particular students that if they were to ask me for a letter, it would be a particularly strong one; that volunteering has been reciprocated on a few occasions.

[Andrei A. Buckareff]

I have been on a search committee this year. I ignored such letters. Since I am not certain that such letters have much if any value, I have elected to rely on the letters of recommendation provided by an applicant's dissertation committee members, outside scholars familiar with an applicant's research, and professors who have witnessed the applicant teach on more than one occasion.

Of course, Trent is right that some instructors may inspire students, even motivating them to take more philosophy courses; but my experience has been that they are not always the best instructors. I can think of examples of very popular instructors I have known who were not good philosophers and were mediocre teachers at best. But this is not to say that I believe there is no value in letters from former students. I just ignore them since I am not confident they have much value and, if they do, just how they ought to be weighed. I would recommend against including letters from students (unless required to do so) since I suspect many search committee members will simply ignore such letters or may even think negatively about a candidate for including them.

[Seth]

I think such student recommendations would be valuable, especially for "teaching" colleges and universities. I don't think undergraduate students are concerned about their professors' latest philosophical research, they care about the professors' ability to explain the material well and inspire curiosity and discussion.

[Eric]

I wrote a letter, on the request of my current department, for a professor I had at my previous (graduate) institution, who was up for a job at the current department. I assume it played no role in the actual hiring of the person, but I was asked to speak of said professor's ability to advise advanced students, etc. I would assume, with Brian, that the probative value is very limited, but that letters from students in graduate programs might carry more probative weight than those from undergraduates.

A related concern is that there may be a disincentive for students, if asked, to write these letters honestly : they may fear (presumably unreasonably) that the professor or some other future colleagues of that professor might see (or hear about) a letter that was less-than-sparking, and worry that grudges are kept. I'm guessing that committees would never let that information leak out, but students might still worry. And, to counter that worry, they might gild the lily more than they ought: paint the professor as a flawless, omniscient being just in case the letter's contents snuck out.

[Jerry Neu]

I think it is in general a bad idea to include student letters in dossiers. I would expect that just about any candidate could find at least a few students that would speak well of them.

[Steven Palmer Peterson]

My wife wrote one for one of her dissertation advisers.

This makes a little more sense to me given that graduate students have a lot more contact and graduate student advising could be a vital part of the job. A letter gives a deeper understanding of what the applicant does as an adviser -- and, if the person writing the letter has a tenure track job, you know the applicant at least didn't screw up the grad student.

At any rate, people can cherry pick class teaching evaluations too, and, if I remember correctly, the highest correlation with good evaluation scores was letting your students out early.

[Richard Brown]

Is it standard practice to include student letters when one is up for tenure? I had a professor ask me to write something like this (though he was a psychology professor)...if so I don't see what the difference is here...

[Christopher]

A professor that I TAed for asked all of us TAs to put together letters that noted what we thought of her teaching methods and style. It was a bit awkward, but the letters were asked for after we were done working for the prof. I would have given them to this professor because they genuinely are an exceptional teacher, but it would have been almost impossible to actually refuse to write that letter. While the request was associated with an 'if you're uncomfortable with this, don't write a letter', I wouldn't feel like I could really refuse the offer on the basis that I don't know how it would affect my future relations with this prof in particular or other members of the graduate faculty, generally. Maybe it's just the paranoid part of me, but refusing requests from senior faculty strikes me a particularly dangerous given that I don't know if it will negatively affect future funding requests/references/etc.

[Kalynne Pudner]

As an instructor who hopes to apply for a tenure-track position at some point, I would have expected student letters to carry significant weight: who else to better assess my teaching ability than its direct targets? Would the letters be discounted, ignored, or worse, offensive, if they (1) accompanied, rather than replaced, the results of the anonymous evaluations, in order to provide more specificity; (2) were written by students voluntarily, after the completion of coursework; (3) included contact information for follow-up; and (4) went directly to the search committee in sealed envelopes, as teacher recommendations of students often do?

I think it's unlikely a teacher would abuse, pressure or bribe a student for a recommendation letter, even if possible in principle. Who would want such a letter? And while a mediocre or poor teacher might get good student recommendations, a truly superior teacher would be even more likely to get them. How else are the superior teachers identified? Isn't it better to get a few false positives than no possible positives?

Although students are admittedly not in a position to speak to the quality of my research, they are in a better position to speak to the quality of my teaching than, say, the director of the graduate program I completed ten years ago. When a student tells me s/he has spontaneously emailed the chair complimenting my teaching and recommending tenure (as naive and perhaps inappropriate as the recommendation may be), I'm gratified, and it's disturbing to think the chair might hold it against me.

[[name withheld at request of student]]

(please withhold my identity, please)

I'm a philosophy Ph.D. student, and I have been asked on two different occasions to write letters for my professors up for tenure & promotion. Although I believe my letters were honest (although positive), I felt somewhat coerced, at least in the second case. I was not aware, in the first case, when I wrote the letter that my letter would eventually be read by the professor up for tenure & promotion -- with my name attached. Apparently, the relevant state laws require that almost the entire dossier (including student letters) be made available to the professor if she requests it. I felt betrayed when the professor later approached me to thank me for the letter, noting specific comments I made in the letter.

In the second case, knowing that the professor would read my letter certainly colored the letter itself, I think. Although I could have refused to write the letter, that, too, would have created awkwardnesses, since the professor would know I refused. This creates an impossible situation for grad students, in my view, especially those who work closely with the professors requesting letters. Surely the nature of the power relations are different for undergrad students, but in general it seems to me that given the substantial power differences between professor and student, requesting letters from students is generally inappropriate, unless clear and strong protections are put in place to protect students from retaliation.

[Thornton]

People writing comments seem to be responding to two very different scenarios, viz. the inclusion of recommendation letters written by graduate and undergraduate students (1) for the dossier of a tenure track job candidate and (2) for the case of a faculty member going up for tenure and/or promotion. The initial post concerned the first case, but many of the replies seem to concern the second case. My sense, as a job candidate, is that whereas in the former case, student recommendations would be largely irrelevant (and perhaps even detrimental, if they were used instead of letters of recommendation by people who are in fact actually competent to evaluate your scholarship and teaching), in the latter case they might speak to a person's ability as a teacher (which may or may not be relevant to the person's tenure case, depending on whether one was at a teaching college or research university). On a practical level, my hunch is that student recommendation letters--no matter how exuberant, flattering, and detailed--help a job candidate not at all. I'd be curious if a member of a search committee felt otherwise.

[Eddy Nahmias]

I included copies of 3-4 letters and 3-4 emails from my former students in the "long version" of my *teaching portfolio*--rather than with letters of reference, where they don't seem to belong. (I had a shorter version of teaching portfolio for research institutes that did not include these letters). Most but not all of the letters were solicited from students who had made clear to me that they found my teaching inspiring (they probably received good grades too, but so what, they put a lot of effort into the class because they liked it). At least one of the letters and all the emails were unsolicited.

It is a crime that teaching ability is usually dismissed (or given lip service) as an important criteria at many institutions hiring philosopers (esp. research universities). Teaching will account for at least 50% of many of these people's jobs. The best ways to assess such ability are unclear, as is research ability, but letters from some of the relevant people (students) who can assess these abilities seems relevant. As with research letters, these student letters will be more useful the more specific details they include. A mediocre teacher will likely be unable to solicit several letters from students saying both that s/he was the most inspiring teacher s/he ever had and that s/he used methods X,Y,Z to improve the students' writing abilities and methods A,B,C to develop their abilities to read and analyze philosophical arguments, etc.

[Alan Thomas]

I was once told that the late Peter Winch judged the quality of a philosophy department not by the number of undergraduates graduating with a first but by the ratio of 2:1 to 2:2 students overall. I think there is something to that; it is not that first class students don't need teaching and will do well anyway, but that teaching quality tends to show up elsewhere in the number of people who really needed good teaching who demonstrably derived benefit from it. I am sure we all know teachers who are only interested in the very best students, who remind them of their younger selves, and who let the devil take the hindmost when it comes to the weaker students. An impartially administered measure of teaching quality at the level of the institution, for all students, is surely a far more reliable piece of evidence than a solicited letter.

Anyway, the real point is that no-one is going to win the hype wars, so any escalation is to be resisted as soon as it shows up.

[David Hunter]

I include within my CV copies of my teaching evaluations, a selection of the comments from these evaluations and then a selection of unsolicited comments I have received, mostly via email.

I clearly label what the source is and have original copies available for inspection (which I note in the CV).

I wouldn't solicit an letter/comment from a student (except anonymously via teaching evaluations) but I am happy to use comments that students have sent me. I do always go back to the students and ask their permission to quote them in my CV, which thus far they have been happy to agree to.

I would be uncomfortable to directly solicit a letter of recommendation from a student of mine for precisely the reasons Harry B identified, but if they effectively send it to you I see no harm in using it.

You can see what I do here:
http://davidhuntercv.blogspot.com/2007/07/teaching-evaluations-full-list.html
(Sorry for some reason the direct link to the relevant section messes up the pagination)

I agree it is weak evidence of good teaching ability as are anonymous evaluations (is there any strong evidence of good teaching ability?) but it is some evidence and think it ought to be counted. I particularly think unsolicited comments ought to be taken into consideration, since the lecturer obviously impressed the student enough to motivate them to go to the effort to send an email.

[maenad]

In one way I am against the inclusion of student letters since I feel that it represents another aspect of the general "credential inflation" trend with respect to philosophy jobs. That is, recently teaching statements became de riguer elements of one's job dossier. Then, teaching statements plus evaluation data (especially troubling since evaluation data is so problematic, and the methods of obtaining it are so various across institutions). Maybe soon, students letters will be de facto required..I don't think this would be healthy.

On the other hand, student letters might off-set some of the bad effects of over-reliance on evaluation data. Evaluation data provides a veneer of objectivity, because it is quantitative. For this reason, search committees like eval data because it offers a simplistic way to rank candidates amid complexities.

Because this quantitative data can be highly misleading, the narrative student letter might serve as a good antidote. And, as a previous commentator notes, student letters are already incorporated as parts of promotion and tenure dossiers at many institutions, so why not include it?