Overreliance on student satisfaction surveys in medical education: a call for reform in evaluation and accreditation practices

Student satisfaction surveys have become a cornerstone of medical education, influencing critical decisions such as faculty promotion and institutional accreditation. However, the systemic overreliance on satisfaction surveys, especially student evaluations of teaching, is concerning. These self-report surveys, initially designed for formative feedback, are now used to make high-stakes decisions despite their well-documented biases and weak correlations with actual learning outcomes. This overreliance not only diminishes their usefulness but also risks fostering a culture where feedback is devalued, data are underused, and educational quality is potentially compromised. Moreover, the inherent biases in student evaluations of teaching-driven by irrelevant factors such as teacher demographics and other contextual factors-undermine their validity, disproportionately affecting marginalized groups and perpetuating systemic inequities. The overreliance on student satisfaction data in faculty promotion and medical school accreditation further exacerbates these issues, encouraging superficial strategies to boost satisfaction scores rather than substantive improvements in teaching, learning, and assessment. In this Scholarly Perspective, the authors argue for a critical rethinking of the role of student satisfaction surveys in medical education. They encourage the medical education community to reduce reliance on these instruments in favor of more holistic evaluation processes that better reflect educational quality. Although the authors recognize the value of student feedback, they argue it should be integrated within a broader, more evidence-informed evaluation system to provide more meaningful insights. Given the high stakes, the authors advocate for timely, meaningful reform in how the medical education community evaluates educational quality and accredits MD programs in the United States.