Gritsngravy
Superstar
Can you prove that students today don’t put in time and effort versus students in the past
And how far in the past are you considering
Interesting story coming out of NYU. Professor Maitland Jr prominent chemist was fired after students complained his course was too hard.
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And how far in the past are you considering
Gritsngravy
Superstar
That’s anecdotal, and how do you know what students was like in the past
Everybody in the sciences knows organic chem is bullshyt anyway. Just making it out with your sanity is all that matters.
No, what you're saying is silly.
There's no proof that students don't put in the same time and effort "that they used to." In fact, every single study shows the exact opposite of what you're saying.
Even more ridiculous is the inane idea that students are "more entitled" now than they used to be. College was, until the late 1900s, a playground for wealthy, white private school students. White men used to walk into Harvard and Princeton as C+ students from their local day school, and from there directly into a white shoe position in one of several areas.
And are you suggesting the abolition of high school grades and standardized test scores in favor of access for all to higher education?
I wonder how much of the changing dynamic is because education used to be for the children of the elite but now caters to middle class kids who want to use it as a vehicle to enter elite society.
Middle class people have been sending their children to university for decades
I think the changing dynamic is due to the astronomical rise in tuition caused by the reliance of universities on tuition (especially public universities dealing with declining state support)
Lots of students enter university with great grades, get through introductory university courses with solid grades, and somehow still can't do basic high school level algebra by the time they are taking advanced upper division courses. They are getting good grades without actually learning much.
As for your comment about entitled students, I am talking about university students as a whole, not children of the wealthy who go to Harvard. The average student at Big State U does not come from a wealthy family.
No, I don't suggest the abolition of high school grades and standardized test scores. But the education system in the US has deteriorated a lot, and standards have been dropping. All I am saying is that entering students at university X having higher GPAs than they did a decade ago is not meaningful. Fixing the education system is a complex problem that would require a lot of different things.
@EndDomination , fantastic and very hopeful article coming out of InsideHigherEd:
www.insidehighered.com
That, too, should concern every American faculty member. To be clear, I don’t think we should lower our standards to allow more students—whatever their backgrounds—to skate by. Rather, we should assist them in meeting the kind of high standards that Maitland Jones reportedly set.
That’s what David Laude did at the University of Texas, where he proved that more people will rise to the mark if we provide them the proper support. Like Jones, Laude is a prominent chemistry professor. And for many years, large numbers of students flunked his freshman survey course.
Initially, Laude took a kind of grim pride in that. He was holding these kids accountable, damn it! And if they didn’t make it, it was their own damned fault. As recounted in the journalist Paul Tough’s invaluable book, The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us (Mariner Books, 2019), Laude even participated in a time-honored ritual of weed-out courses: he would ask two or three students to stand on the first day of class and then announce that it was statistically probable that one of them would fail.
But the ones most likely to do so came from low-income families and attended public high schools with few advanced classes, as Laude realized when he looked at his grade distribution. Many were first-generation college students. They reminded him of his younger self: born into a working-class family, he had barely passed freshman chemistry. Rather than assuming that a consistent fraction of students would fail, he started to wonder how he could help them succeed.
Like any good scientist, he devised an experiment to find out. He placed students who came to college with low SAT scores into a smaller section of his course, where they also received extra support from tutors and advisers. But the content they studied was identical to what Laude taught in his regular large-group course: same textbooks, same lectures, same tests.
The result? The students in the smaller section earned the same average grades as those in the regular lecture course. Even more, they graduated three years later at a higher rate than the students in the larger section did.
You don’t have to be a brain surgeon—or an organic chemist—to see why. Laude didn’t water down the course material for the underprivileged students, in any way; rather, he developed new ways to assist them in learning it. Other universities have followed suit, radically reducing student failures by providing tutors, advisers and smaller classes. They have also instituted digital “nudges,” such as text messages offering to help people who have failed an exam and video testaments by successful students describing their initial struggles.
Although this “student success movement”—as its adherents call it—is still in its infancy, we already have data suggesting that its interventions can have powerful effects. What we don’t have is a shared institutional commitment to student success itself. I’m talking about you, and me, and everyone else who works in higher education. If we were truly dedicated to students’ academic growth, we wouldn’t need a special “movement” devoted to it.
'Weed-out' courses need to be rethought (opinion)
The controversial firing of an organic chemistry professor at New York University speaks to broader issues about student success in “weed-out” courses, Jonathan Zimmerman writes.
That, too, should concern every American faculty member. To be clear, I don’t think we should lower our standards to allow more students—whatever their backgrounds—to skate by. Rather, we should assist them in meeting the kind of high standards that Maitland Jones reportedly set.
That’s what David Laude did at the University of Texas, where he proved that more people will rise to the mark if we provide them the proper support. Like Jones, Laude is a prominent chemistry professor. And for many years, large numbers of students flunked his freshman survey course.
Initially, Laude took a kind of grim pride in that. He was holding these kids accountable, damn it! And if they didn’t make it, it was their own damned fault. As recounted in the journalist Paul Tough’s invaluable book, The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us (Mariner Books, 2019), Laude even participated in a time-honored ritual of weed-out courses: he would ask two or three students to stand on the first day of class and then announce that it was statistically probable that one of them would fail.
But the ones most likely to do so came from low-income families and attended public high schools with few advanced classes, as Laude realized when he looked at his grade distribution. Many were first-generation college students. They reminded him of his younger self: born into a working-class family, he had barely passed freshman chemistry. Rather than assuming that a consistent fraction of students would fail, he started to wonder how he could help them succeed.
Like any good scientist, he devised an experiment to find out. He placed students who came to college with low SAT scores into a smaller section of his course, where they also received extra support from tutors and advisers. But the content they studied was identical to what Laude taught in his regular large-group course: same textbooks, same lectures, same tests.
The result? The students in the smaller section earned the same average grades as those in the regular lecture course. Even more, they graduated three years later at a higher rate than the students in the larger section did.
You don’t have to be a brain surgeon—or an organic chemist—to see why. Laude didn’t water down the course material for the underprivileged students, in any way; rather, he developed new ways to assist them in learning it. Other universities have followed suit, radically reducing student failures by providing tutors, advisers and smaller classes. They have also instituted digital “nudges,” such as text messages offering to help people who have failed an exam and video testaments by successful students describing their initial struggles.
Although this “student success movement”—as its adherents call it—is still in its infancy, we already have data suggesting that its interventions can have powerful effects. What we don’t have is a shared institutional commitment to student success itself. I’m talking about you, and me, and everyone else who works in higher education. If we were truly dedicated to students’ academic growth, we wouldn’t need a special “movement” devoted to it.
dora_da_destroyer
Master Baker
yea, big difference between a professor programming a hard class and a prof who sets out to ensure people fail. while there have always been professors that brag on failing people, college costs too damn much these days for you to be fukking around with kids like thatThe 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.
Trying to post the links from a Twitter thread made by a professor and former student of his - my Chrome browser is acting up
@EndDomination , fantastic and very hopeful article coming out of InsideHigherEd:
'Weed-out' courses need to be rethought (opinion)
The controversial firing of an organic chemistry professor at New York University speaks to broader issues about student success in “weed-out” courses, Jonathan Zimmerman writes.
[ARTICLE]
The problem is that there are too many people and not enough jobs, they use college to weed out people from well paying jobs with benefits.
Colleges are unhelpful on purpose, they don't want everyone to get a degree.
Darth Nubian
I bought my first Ki from my baby momma brother
It really depends on the professor. The organic professors I had who came from production laboratory backgrounds were vastly superior to the ones who were from academia. If every student is having trouble grasping the material then you are the problem, not the students. My undergraduate degree is in Chemistry.
I agree that the perception is part of it. The elite don't want their kids to have competition.
But in reality, we aren't producing nearly enough people for those well-paying jobs. The USA doesn't produce enough doctors, nurses, engineers, scientists, or programmers to meet demand. That's why we have to import massive #'s from overseas, which then creates brain drains in those places.
DJ Paul's Arm
Veteran
Stopped reading after “How to identity and conquer…”
