Students’ Evaluation of the Teaching Process at Lebanese Universities: An Assessment of the Faculty’s Perceptions

Lebanon, like other countries, has a special interest in conserving the integrity, quality, and fairness of its higher education, especially that it serves approximately 200,000 students registered in the scholastic year 2017-2018; these students injected millions of dollars into the private institutions. Students are seen as customers whose satisfaction and comfort jump to the front and prevail as the main doctrine that governs the educational process. The student-as-customer concept is a fundamental factor that plays a major role in educational institutions, even the traditional non-profit ones that basically depend on tuition fees incurred by the number of enrolled students in order to cover their inflated budgets; hence, the need to have satisfied stakeholder —students. This orientation has made the Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) a key criterion to evaluate the teaching process; especially since SET is currently used to assess and improve teaching and learning processes. Faculty members who are considered by the students, non-lenient, serious, strict, and highly demanding are put under pressure, if not penalized, irrespective if it is fair or not, hence leading to the former being frustrated. This research provides an insight into the frustration state of the faculty members at certain Lebanese universities due to the importance which is given to SET and its effects on the educational procedure and their careers per se. This research is exploratory and quantitative using a survey questionnaire distributed to 146 faculty members. Data is analyzed using SPSS software. Findings reveal that the majority of the said faculty members have a negative view of the SET evaluation process in terms of format, and the content of the corresponding questionnaires; results are seen as being ineffective and inappropriate means of evaluation. The SET evaluation process is complicated and the assessment survey differs from one university to another. Outcomes of this paper serve policymakers at the higher education institutions when setting the institution's mission and vision and purpose; it may direct the continuous efforts to create agreed upon teaching and learning quality standards.