Why Are University Professors Such Schlubs?

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For no reason whatsoever, I am reproducing below the results of a decade-old bit of research that uses student scores from RateMyProfessor.com to construct average hotness scores for different academic disciplines. The authors used a scale from -1 to 1, which is entirely nonstandard in the field, so I’ve renormed the scores to the more generally accepted scale of 1 to 10. I assume professorial hotness is, in fact, average, which means the various disciplines should probably range from about 3 to 7. But not a single one even breaks 5.

What does this mean? University professors are slobs? 18-year-old students have really high standards? Movies and television have conditioned us to think of really hot actors as average, thus making us all disappointed with real life? I dunno. What’s your guess?

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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