I taught for one semester at a big ten university, many years ago. And I live in a college town, so I have a lot of friends and relatives who are teachers.
It's widely held that student evaluations are proportional to the grades that the students expect to get. My office mate, and a professor, were co-teaching a course, and they got into shouting matches about grades, because the professor was up for tenure, and wanted better evaluations from his students.
In addition, students will badger their teachers for better grades, and dealing with it adds to the workload and stress of teaching. After each exam, I had a line of students at my door, asking me to review the grader's marks.
My view is that it's always marginally easier to give out higher grades, even if there's no overt pressure from above.
As a former professor, there is some correlation between grade and evaluation, but there is a much higher correlation with workload. The less work in the course the higher the grade. I needed to maintain a teaching evaluation over 3.5 / 5, but I cared that my students actually learnt something so I would aim for a score of around 3.6 - 3.7 and then loaded up my students as much work as I could and achieve this.
The sad thing with teaching evaluation is they are collected while the student was doing the subject. I can't tell you how many of my students complained like crazy about the subject while doing (what you expect me to work), who a year later told me the subject was the best one they had taken in their whole degree because they had learnt so much.
It's widely held that student evaluations are proportional to the grades that the students expect to get. My office mate, and a professor, were co-teaching a course, and they got into shouting matches about grades, because the professor was up for tenure, and wanted better evaluations from his students.
In addition, students will badger their teachers for better grades, and dealing with it adds to the workload and stress of teaching. After each exam, I had a line of students at my door, asking me to review the grader's marks.
My view is that it's always marginally easier to give out higher grades, even if there's no overt pressure from above.