NY Times: NYU Prof Fired for Holding Standards

[Wahoo Redux]

A sign of the apocalypse or a sign of the times?

At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?

Lower Deck:

Maitland Jones Jr., a respected professor, defended his standards. But students started a petition, and the university dismissed him.

But last spring, as the campus emerged from pandemic restrictions, 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him.

Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores.

The professor defended his standards. But just before the start of the fall semester, university deans terminated Dr. Jones's contract.

I'm absolutely stunned by this.  Something of this nature would not surprise me at all happening at the place we currently teach at----but at NYU!?!?!?

On the other hand, we can no longer pretend that our students are not customers that we are all competing for.  I just figured an august uni like NYU would have an eager waiting list and want to keep standards high.

Go figure.

Guess we better start designing coupons for grade inflation and 2-for-1 type assignment deals.

[mahagonny]

"He said the problem with students emerged a decade ago, just a couple years after he moved from Princeton to NYU in 2007, as he noticed a loss of focus in his students.

As students returned from virtual learning as a result of the pandemic, that problem only got worse. Students were not studying and, Jones said, students seemingly did not know how to.

'We now see single digit scores and even zeros,' he said."'

Wish I could grade like that. He commented "I don't need to get my job back. I just hope this doesn't happen to the next professor." So, although I guess he was just an adjunct at NYU, he didn't worry. At age 84, when you've made enough money to last you.
Sign of the times, like it says it the other thread. Post-pandemic, students are weaker. But they noticed it starting 10 years ago, Dr. Jones and his colleagues. I did too. Undergrad, different field, but still...

Maybe it's good that it happens at a supposedly first rate university so the problem finally gets some serious attention.

[Wahoo Redux]

The pandemic was simply not that hard.  Yes, I understand how important socialization is to young people, but it was not like a Russian invasion or a hurricane that devastated the whole country.

[mahagonny]

That's why there's a 'bang your head on the wall' thread.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Seems like there must be more to the story

[ciao_yall]

Seems like there must be more to the story

Yeah... I don't want to be ageist but still teaching at 84 and he was feeling like students were "losing focus" back in 2007?

Pot... kettle... and all of that?

[kaysixteen]

1) certainly when this guy started his teaching career, students were better, and work expectations higher.  There is very little doubt of this.

2)nonetheless, the pandemic did significantly affect education in this country, esp k12, but even higher ed.  Kids in school during the previous two years, such as, ahem, almost all current college frosh, well, they just did not get the same junior and senior year quality hs ed that has been normal in recent decades, and, in addition to that, they also got, well... less direction, less oversight, less, well, compulsion to work.

[mahagonny]

1) certainly when this guy started his teaching career, students were better, and work expectations higher.  There is very little doubt of this.

2)nonetheless, the pandemic did significantly affect education in this country, esp k12, but even higher ed.  Kids in school during the previous two years, such as, ahem, almost all current college frosh, well, they just did not get the same junior and senior year quality hs ed that has been normal in recent decades, and, in addition to that, they also got, well... less direction, less oversight, less, well, compulsion to work.

It was a lot easier to raise the money you need for college too, when this guy started his career. One less thing to stress you out.
With respect to student performance, by his being 84, he has more information than we do, or is more vividly aware of it. As you allude.
I can agree his age probably has something to do with it. He was just too done with students not performing high enough. He just went down swinging.
Thing about organic chemistry. How can you call work good when it's wrong? It's not like doing sculpture.

[downer]

NYU didn't say he was fired for holding standards. That's his take. Indeed, he was not even fired, he was just let go, no contract renewal. It's not like he was replaced mid-semester like some incompetent language instructor.

I don't see any reason not to trust the dept chair's judgment about this. Well, except for continuing to hire this guy in the first place, before the problem got out of hand.

I'm baffled about how NYT got hold of the story and blew it up. I guess someone either knew the prof or else someone at the paper has a kid at NYU who told them about the story. Notably, the NYU newspaper https://nyunews.com/ has no mention of the issue. The students don't actually give a crap about the story. It's NYT muckraking.

But clearly the muckraking hits a nerve. Look at the readers' comments. People love to complain about declining standards. 5000 statements of outrage. People eat this crap up.

[marshwiggle]

But clearly the muckraking hits a nerve. Look at the readers' comments. People love to complain about declining standards. 5000 statements of outrage. People eat this crap up.

If you're older than a millenial, you can compare the expectations when you were a student to the expectations you have for your students. Unless you're at a much more prestigious place than you attended, you probably demand much less of your students than was demanded of you. (Just to be clear; I'm in favour of "Teach the students you have, not the students you want", but the students I have are different than the ones I had 20 years ago.)

[downer]

But clearly the muckraking hits a nerve. Look at the readers' comments. People love to complain about declining standards. 5000 statements of outrage. People eat this crap up.

If you're older than a millenial, you can compare the expectations when you were a student to the expectations you have for your students. Unless you're at a much more prestigious place than you attended, you probably demand much less of your students than was demanded of you. (Just to be clear; I'm in favour of "Teach the students you have, not the students you want", but the students I have are different than the ones I had 20 years ago.)

Maybe, but I went to a much better university than I teach at, and in a different country with a different educational system. So the comparison does not mean much.

I am dubious that even comparisons of the same university over time are particularly meaningful since so much of the other context has changed. In this NYU case, students were not complaining about other faculty. But we have no reason to think those other faculty are more lenient than Col Sanders was.

[spork]

NYU is a rent-seeking organization. Average annual cost is 2/3 higher than Columbia. It's 4-year graduation rate is 10% lower. Median salary 10-years after graduation among students who received federal financial aid is 15% lower.*

The petition supposedly did not ask that the professor be fired/not renewed; that action was initiated by NYU administrators who likely perceived student/customer satisfaction to be more important than learning.

This is an organic chemistry class likely filled with delusional grade-grubbers who think they are going to med school. The professor, an author of one of the leading textbooks in the field, supposedly emphasizes problem-solving ability rather than the memorization/regurgitation of factual information. I'm going to guess that his exams lean more toward a "Here's a problem, show me how you would solve it" nature than the lists of multiple choice questions that students prefer. Students were bombing exams and blamed the professor for "ruining" their chances of entering med school and becoming brain surgeons.

*All data from U.S. DoE College Scorecard.

[downer]

*All data from U.S. DoE College Scorecard.

Where did DoE get the info from? Hopefully not from Columbia, which lies about its own performance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/12/us/columbia-university-us-news-ranking.html

Yes, NYU is mainly a school for entitled rich kids and it has a brand to protect. That's a separate issue from whether the dept chair really caved in to student pressure. People want to think it's true so they can bitch and moan, but I'm inclined to respect the dept chair's decision. As others have said, the NYT reporting is very unlikely to have the full story.

[artalot]

Professors have been complaining about declining standards since Plato. Not that I don't have the same complaints, I just think we need to contextualize them. I also think that students today are less comfortable with failure. Universities don't help - we reward programs that have lots of students in the major, thus incentivizing professors to grade more easily and to avoid difficult discussions with students. I had a student with a 2.5 GPA who thought they could just retake a few courses and get into medical school. I have absolutely nothing to do with the pre-med program and was the only person who would tell him that it wasn't going to happen. 
I'm very surprised that he was let go, especially since the students didn't ask for it in the petition. I agree with Sun Worshipper that it seems like something else may have influenced this decision.

[Ruralguy]

The rallying cry of nearly every poor teacher I've experienced (as a professor evaluating them are just hearing about them) is "Its not me, its you,"  meaning that they don't suck at teaching, we suck at holding standards. No, maybe they just are sucky teachers. And yes, the standard of what makes a good teacher has changed over the years.