Hi All,
I recently took a MGMAT free test. I have written the following essay as part of the "Analyze Issue" section. Please rate it on a scale of 1-6 . Thank you in advance!

ESSAY QUESTION
“The mission of a university is to educate its students. Therefore, a professor’s pay and promotions should be based primarily on students’ evaluations of his or her courses.”

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

YOUR RESPONSE:

The opinion stated is that a professor's pay and promotions should be based primarily on students' evaluations of his or her courses.
I agree with the opinion and I will briefly outline the reasons why I agree.
First of all, feedback and evaluation are critical for an individual's professional growth be it in business or academia. Usually, in a work environment, the evaluation is done by a manager who is in a position to observe the employees closely. Applying the same analogy, the people who would be in a good position to judge a professor would be the people who are in a position to observe him or her closely. In the case of a university, it will be the students. Analogous to an office environment, the evaluation of the students should be the primary basis on which a professor's pay and promotions are based.
From a professor's point of view, this is beneficial because it provides him or her the opportunity to constantly improve the course and the way of teaching. The better he or she performs, the better the students' evaluations will be and hence better the chances the professor will be promoted or will be given a pay hike.
Another advantage of the method suggested above is that it helps weed out unproductive professors because constantly receiving bad evaluation from students will force the professor to either quit or improve drastically his or her performance.
These two outcomes will help a university to achieve its mission of educating students.
To summarize, based on the reasoning I have given above, I agree with the opinion stated in the question.