Aleks pointed me to this paper by James Felton, John Mitchell, and Michael Stinson (Central Michigan University that finds that students’ ratings of professors’ teaching quality are highly correlated with their ratings of the “easiness” of the course and the “sexiness” of the professors. (I’d point out that all the tables could (and should) be replaced by graphs, but you know that by know, right?)

This paper reminded me of the work of Daniel Hamermesh (University of Texas), who has written several papers on the rewards of beauty, including one on beauty and teaching evaluations. A couple of years ago, I saw some news blurb on this last paper and I emailed Hamermesh (who I’ve never met) and asked him for the data for the students in my multilevel modeling class to play with. He very graciously sent me the data, and my students always enjoy analyzing them.