It's official: college teaching is a popularity contest:

It seems the most beautiful university instructors get the highest rankings on student evaluations, according to a study conducted by Daniel Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

He asked a group of students to rate the photos of 94 UT professors on a beauty scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. When he compared those ratings with the average student evaluation scores of the same professors, the results were striking: Teachers considered better-looking also had consistently superior evaluations, and the difference between the comeliest and the homeliest professor was a full point on a five-point evaluation scale.

Because most universities consider student evaluations when giving raises and promotions, the study shows that professors' looks could affect their salaries, said Hamermesh, who has written papers on the correlation between physical beauty and earnings.

Sound unfair? In a strictly economic sense, it might not be. If students pay more attention to good-looking instructors and thus learn more from them, then professorial beauty could have a "productivity effect," Hamermesh said.

Thanks to reader Fred R. for the link.

UPDATE: King Banaian has more on Hamermesh's study.