Every year our teachers ask us to fill out teacher reviews. It seems to be in the best interest of teachers for us to fill these out, as many try to incentivize us to do so. Many teachers go with the straightforward approach: students that fill out the survey will receive an extra point or so added to their final grade. Some teachers get more creative with it, having some threshold of students needing to fill out the survey for everyone to receive an extra point (these teachers are likely not aware of the incentive given here to free ride, my public choice learning warns against this approach).
I think this represents some solution to the principle-agent problem. Though students are not exactly agents for professors, this is still an effort to align the incentives of the student and the professor. The professor would like for the survey to be filled out, but most students are unlikely to do so if there is nothing in it for them. One thing I do find interesting about this is that this is done in some classes where the final grade is decided by a curve of overall performance in the class, so if everyone were to fill out the survey the point would be meaningless.
One of my teachers this year has decided not to follow the free point model. They instead have informed us that any student that does not fill out the survey will have points taken off of their final grade. From a public choice perspective, this should achieve the same outcome, as for the consideration of the student their grade will be one point higher than otherwise if they decide to fill out the survey. But if I am not thinking from a public choice perspective, I think this is pretty uncool. If any one reading this blog happens to have the opportunity to enforce this same rule for a class of their own, I would warn them that I have recently been reading about the benefits of creating a union...
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