It seems fairly obvious, doesn’t it? Not that there’s an explicit agreement to trade high marks for good reviews, but it’s surely in the nature of humans as social animals to seek out and reward cooperative strategies?

Not quite so simple, according to Pieter Spooren, of the university’s department of political and social sciences, whose doctoral thesis concerned student evaluations of staff. “It’s not the case that a teacher can buy a good evaluation by giving out good marks,” he says. “It is the case that students who get higher marks have a more positive evaluation of their learning situation.”

University teaching staff in Flanders are evaluated once every five years by a committee that looks at their record of teaching, research and management. Part of the committee’s opinion is based on student evaluations.

The main reason for the correlation, Spooren says, is that students recognise the contribution of a teacher, and those who do better in exams have more to be thankful for. “It is true that a student who has taken a lot out of a professor’s lectures will tend to score higher marks, and will then go on to give a good evaluation,” he says. “And it’s not always true that the teacher who gives the best scores gets the best evaluation. There are really tough professors who get highly positive evaluations.”

Evaluations, Spooren says, “can play a major role in improving education. …Students who fill in an evaluation form – and at Antwerp that’s 30% to 60% of them – do it conscientiously. Although there is a selection bias, because students are not obliged to take part.”