Online student evaluations of hospitality professors: A cross-cultural comparison

With the popularity of RateMyProfessors.com and similar online teacher-rating websites, research on online student evaluation issue has generated valuable results. Online data form a better research source for cross-cultural research than traditional survey data. Using data collected from two online teacher-rating websites: RateMyProfessors.com and PingLaoShi.com, the current study conducted cross-cultural comparisons of online student evaluations of hospitality professors in two countries, the United States and China. Twenty-one U.S. universities and 18 Chinese universities were selected, resulting in 469 professors in the U.S. and 646 professors in China. The results of multiple regressions showed that interest was the most important factor influencing overall quality of professors for both countries. However, the effects of easiness and gender on the overall quality were totally different across the two countries. The study then provided suggestions regarding hospitality education improvement in two countries.