This article considers the validity and usefulness of student evaluations of
teaching (SET) at a small Australian university. Face and content validity
were considered and a factor analysis was performed to evaluate the
overall validity of a survey instrument which purports to give useable
results in respect to teaching methods and approaches. It was found that
the survey instrument was flawed in that the ten compulsory questions of
which it is constituted, all collapsed into one dimension. This dimension
was determined to be the extent of popularity of the lecturer for whom the
survey was conducted. In essence, the survey is not an evaluation of
teaching, but rather students' opinions of the lecturer concerned. It was
concluded that the SET survey serves no educational purpose and is a
violation of academic freedom and lecturers’ rights.