Interesting story coming out of NYU. Professor Maitland Jr prominent chemist was fired after students complained his course was too hard.

[EndDomination]

If you read the article it says he noticed a decline in student quality a decade ago. Clearly modern students are just softer, probably due to social media. The pandemic has certainly exacerbated that.

You can't be this dumb
Even though NYU's incoming class every year since he started teaching has gotten better grade-wise, standardized test score-wise, extracurricular activity-wise, etc.

They're declining in quality
It's not the aging, curmudgeon professor, its all of the students huh?

 

[kronix]

You can't be this dumb
Even though NYU's incoming class every year since he started teaching has gotten better grade-wise, standardized test score-wise, extracurricular activity-wise, etc.

They're declining in quality
It's not the aging, curmudgeon professor, its all of the students huh?

I think I'd rather go with the well respected professors opinion on this, not his underperforming students.

 

[3rdLetter]

The more people who were students in his class speak up of their difficulties, as well as the traction later articles published in the NYT have gotten - the more its apparent that this is not *just* about his class being a little hard.

It's apparent that he made his class so difficult, it was virtually impossible for even the mathematically inclined to perform admirably in the course, former students have also pointed out that courses by other professors on the same subject did not lead to the same abysmal results. He was not tenured, and while he certainly has won awards at some point in time, he's also been condemned by students in evaluations for decades. Students have also noted that he was unnecessarily cruel to students having trouble in his class, purposely difficult to reach, rude to other staff and students alike, all of which causes issue with what he is HIRED TO DO, WHICH IS TEACH.

The way this was framed by the first NYT article was 100% clickbait, almost to the point of dishonesty. If you're at a top university and your class average is a failing grade, that's due to the professor, not the student body.

Opinion | The N.Y.U. Chemistry Students Shouldn’t Have Needed That Petition (Published 2022)

High-stakes weed-out classes like organic chemistry are relics of an age when college students were much more uniformly privileged.

www.nytimes.com

Opinion | More on the Firing of That N.Y.U. Professor (Published 2022)

It’s really just a routine bureaucratic affair.

www.nytimes.com

Trying to post the links from a Twitter thread made by a professor and former student of his - my Chrome browser is acting up

Some professors out here get their teaching jobs for their accomplishments/research and they can't teach for shyt. Professors like this guy shouldn't be teaching at all if this is how you're gonna treat your students.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Stories like this are pretty difficult to evaluate from the outside.


My sophomore year I took an introductory engineering course from a professor who literally wrote our textbook on the subject. His teaching was horrible. He spent the entire lecture every day just deriving the equations and techniques we were using from their basic principles, but not doing anything to show us how to actually apply those equations and techniques to the kinds of problems we were supposed to solve. When we took our first midterm our class averaged a full 10 points below sections taught by other professors. Being brilliant or being a textbook author doesn't mean you can teach for shyt.

On the other hand, many students are poorly prepared for rigorous problem-solving. They've been given a steady diet of rote memorization and standardized test prep, but then spend their free time jumping around the internet destroying their attention spans and ability to think abstractly at length. And I wouldn't be surprised if smartphones and social media have turned study habits to shyt. How many students are actually willing to put their phones away for 2 hours, refuse to check messages/facebook/twitter/instagram/youtube, and just focus on the material?



Responsibility for students failing should be on the professor first and foremost. But students may be shooting themselves in the foot and making his job tough. Problem-solving skills are essential and shouldn't be compromised. Unless I knew people I trusted who were actually there I wouldn't rush to judgment.

 

[Sukairain]

The point of taking organic chemistry as a class is to learn organic chemistry my nikka - if you're putting in adequate time and you're not getting a grasp on it - there's something else likely going on.

I'm not a teacher but the ones I've had the best relationships with have been the ones with the toughest standards expected from students. Teachers who ask for a lot from students usually only do so because they give so much of themselves to the students. It's a mutual relationship. They go the extra mile for all of you, and in return they want the best back from you.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

The way this was framed by the first NYT article was 100% clickbait, almost to the point of dishonesty. If you're at a top university and your class average is a failing grade, that's due to the professor, not the student body.

Opinion | The N.Y.U. Chemistry Students Shouldn’t Have Needed That Petition (Published 2022)

High-stakes weed-out classes like organic chemistry are relics of an age when college students were much more uniformly privileged.

www.nytimes.com

I agree a lot with that article. Especially in an age of doctor shortages, creating a "weed-out" class that early in the process isn't what education should be about. The point should be to ensure students learn the necessary skills to succeed, not just eliminate all the ones who didn't have an elite educational experience before they got there. Cause if we don't get enough doctors in the pipeline from our own colleges, then we're just going to fill those slots with immigrant doctors, many of whom will have gone to schools that didn't have half the academic rigor of NYU.

Coincidentally I just read an article today about the same issue at the high school level, where algebra is being used to weed out students for college even if their academic path has nothing to do with algebra. I've been hearing the same complaint from math professors for years - algebra is where many kids learn to hate math and find it irrelevant to their lives, when you could teach discreet mathematics and statistics instead and engage students far better.

Against Algebra

Students need more exposure to the way everyday things work and are made.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Carl Tethers]

30% pass rate means be probably just stinks as a teacher

 

[Serious]

30% pass rate means be probably just stinks as a teacher

Don’t most science classes grade on a curve anyways. At least that was my experience

 

[⠀X ⠀]

These students sound like a bunch of pussies. I too wouldn’t want such people treating me.

 

[Pressure]

Do they not Audit courses at NYU?

 

[yseJ]

I've had weeder courses back in my college days. The weeder courses are literally for weeding out students who might not be good enough and basically litmus test of "are you really good enough" . Most if not all of these courses expected extra steps in understanding and midterms would be a lot harder than any homework or projects we'd do. A lot of these classes would have open book exams (this was mid to late 2000s so smartphones weren't really a thing yet) because the questions were really one step above anything in the books.


Low key, I stopped being salty about it once I started working. With engineering and science, it's just not enough to regurgitate, memorize or copycat things. You want that extra "critical thinking and truly understanding" step. If you don't, then there's a chance you will be a shytty doctor/engineer

The median midterm score for these classes was around 50-60

 

[Bboystyle]

Dunno whos right or wrong because America's educational system sucks as it is. Could be both sides are wrong here

 

[gho3st]

this happened at my university when i was going for my masters. This accounting teacher was very good but his class was hard. Bunch of people complained and said he was rude and that his class for hard. He got fired.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I've had weeder courses back in my college days. The weeder courses are literally for weeding out students who might not be good enough and basically litmus test of "are you really good enough" .

The counter as explained in the article @EndDomination posted is that without proper teaching in that situation, in large part you're basically just selecting for superior preparation, not superior ability. Some students will have gone to elite high schools where they'll have been taught how to solve those types of problems and some won't. And in the American system the haves and have nots will largely be divided by race and class.

I'm highly in favor of those types of problem-solving skills being taught, and think it is an essential part of a STEM cirriculum (in my school there wasn't one class like that, it was more like 2/3 of the courseload that would have been considered weeders lol). But should the view be that they are "weeders", separating the worthy students from the unworthy? Or should they be opportunities to learn, where you're doing everything possible to identify exactly why some students haven't got it yet and actively finding alternative ways for them to digest and understand the material, rather than simple failing them for having had a less effective high school experience?

 

[yseJ]

The counter as explained in the article @EndDomination posted is that without proper teaching in that situation, in large part you're basically just selecting for superior preparation, not superior ability. Some students will have gone to elite high schools where they'll have been taught how to solve those types of problems and some won't. And in the American system the haves and have nots will largely be divided by race and class.

I'm highly in favor of those types of problem-solving skills being taught, and think it is an essential part of a STEM cirriculum (in my school there wasn't one class like that, it was more like 2/3 of the courseload that would have been considered weeders lol). But should the view be that they are "weeders", separating the worthy students from the unworthy? Or should they be opportunities to learn, where you're doing everything possible to identify exactly why some students haven't got it yet and actively finding alternative ways for them to digest and understand the material, rather than simple failing them for having had a less effective high school experience?

In my case, it was a top-3 (at very least a top 5) program in the nation and there was no real "preparation" advantage. Our classes were filled with kids on top level from elite schools. And I feel if that is the reputation you have, you need to have academic standards that weed out people beyond the standardized test scores and grades that happen at admission.


These weeder courses were almost always mandatory prereqs and almost always were at the start of the program.


So, I disagree about high school preparation playing a huge role. And I'm OK with top programs requiring not just the ability to repeat what you're told to do but dig extra deep. There's always other programs that are less punishing and demanding.


There are similar things happening at workplaces, only there is less categorization of them as elite or top. There are places where you'd get comprehensive training and expected to follow things to a tee. There are also places where you sink or swim and you have to find bunch of solutions on your own. It's tough to start at the latter places, but some of most incredible career and intellectual growth I've seen was at these places. Conversely, people who had weaker foundations and problem solving couldn't last too long. I don't know.