Students Give Worse Reviews to Professors With Asian Names

Students give professors with last names that sound Asian lower ratings than those with American names, a new study shows.

The study, published in the journal Language in Society, looked at ratings of more than 2,000 mathematics professors on Ratemyprofessors.com, a website where students informally evaluate their instructors. It focused on U.S. institutions, zeroing in on ratings from 2010 to 2014, to capture the length it usually takes to complete an undergraduate degree. The analysis drew names from a list of the 40 most common names in the U.S., not including those who signaled Hispanic origin, and a separate list of 20 last names most frequent in South Korea and China, excluding Lee, which is also common among people with a European background.