Students are the consumers of their education.

When searching for a college, high school graduates tend to weigh their options and make an educated decision about where to go to school.

But when it comes to choosing courses at Iowa State, the ability to compare classes seems limited to word-of-mouth advice.

That is, until now.

After talking about creating an online professor evaluation site for the past year, it is now a reality.

The Web site, which is available at http://xyst.dhs.org/review.php, allows students to rate their professors on a five-star system in areas such as work load, accessibility, communication and teaching styles. It also provides an overall rating of the professors and the number of students who have evaluated them.

Students can also search professors’ evaluations to see what ratings other students gave them.

Right now, there are more than 1,000 ratings compiled online.

The university-wide teaching evaluation system will be available on the site this week.

This Web site is a great tool because it gives students the opportunity to shop around when scheduling classes. Students can choose a professor who teaches in a learning style they like best. And it allows students to make informed decisions when deciding which class or section to take.

This is a better system than talking with friends and roommates about which Economics 101 professor is supposedly the best to have class with.

Another positive aspect of the site is that is was not developed by the administration.

It is a Web site created by students for students. It was created by a computer engineering student with the help of the Government of the Student Body.

There was a demand from students to be able to see student reviews of professors and GSB worked to fulfill that need. Students are filling out the evaluation bubble sheets anyway, so why not have a place for students to review professors?

And professors shouldn’t be worried about the site.

The site’s creators put systems in place that prevent students from rating a certain professor more than once.

No chance for an angry student with a bad grade to damage a professor’s reputation online.

Finally the site is an asset to the students of Iowa State, so they need to take advantage of the opportunity.

Students are the ones paying for their education. So they should check out the online evaluation.

It will help maximize the education students are paying for at Iowa State.

editorialboard: Andrea Hauser, Tim Paluch, Michelle Kann, Charlie Weaver, Omar Tesdell