Ruminations on Student Evaluations

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1011-student-evaluations-feared-loathed-and-not-going-anywhere?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

And from moi:

So... at my current institution, during my 19 years here, a slow struggle has led from a prohibition in the faculty's collective bargaining agreement that gutted the usefulness evaluations to a point at which deans at least are able to review them at their discretion.  Still, it's up to the individual faculty member to decide (1) what the evaluation form will be and (2) whether or not the results will appear in her/his dossier for promotion and tenure.

The head of the faculty union can (and does) provide an inch of research that concludes evaluations are useless; result in grade inflation; are somewhere between a waste of time and downright dangerous.

And yet they do persist, as the Chronicle article attests.

I have some amusing personal experiences with them, e.g.:
- The colleague who was told by one student, "You did not inspire me to read the textbook."
-The (female) colleague who was told she should dress more professionally.   We all had a good laugh at that one at an end of semester department meeting.   The following semester she dressed more professionally.

As for those who claim that students are incapable of evaluating the quality of their instruction, I ask you this:  As a restaurant diner, are you incapable of evaluating the quality of the meal, even though you are not a chef?  Students know if they are being served crap.