NY Times: NYU Prof Fired for Holding Standards

[OneMoreYear]

It is possible he was a poor teacher and/or had standards that were not in line with profs teaching other sections.
However, this complaint from the petition that is cited in the article: ""We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class," the petition said." annoys the crap out of me.  Grades are earned based on your based on your ability to demonstrate the knowledge/skills/performance factors required in that assessment, not on your time/effort. Sometimes, students will put very little time/effort into the material and still earn good grades. Sometimes, students will put a significant amount of time/effort in and they will still fail. While time/effort can contribute to better performance, it's not a guarantee.  I cannot grade "how hard" you worked. There's no "effort" grade in college; this is not kindergarten.

[Parasaurolophus]

...your kindergarten had effort grades?

[Mobius]

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.

Medical school in the Caribbean? Settle for chiropractic school?

[pgher]

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.

Exactly what I thought when I read the story.

[Wahoo Redux]

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.

Exactly what I thought when I read the story.

This guy was not a newbie.  He's taught at the highest ranks and won awards for teaching.  And he had a number of students, current and former, write "glowing" letter in response to the petition.

[Sun_Worshiper]

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.

Exactly what I thought when I read the story.

This guy was not a newbie.  He's taught at the highest ranks and won awards for teaching.  And he had a number of students, current and former, write "glowing" letter in response to the petition.

The more I read about this, the more obvious it seems that there was some problem beyond his tough standards.

[Anon1787]

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.

The chair "felt that his communication with students was skeletal and sometimes perceived as harsh." This was confirmed by students who said that "Dr. Jones was keen to help students who asked questions, but that he could also be sarcastic and downbeat about the class's poor performance." And no extra credit or Zoom recordings. How is this not snowflakery? It does seem to validate the view the NYU treats students (and parents) like customers who are doing little more than paying for a degree.

Perhaps there is some important piece of undisclosed information.

[Wahoo Redux]

In her mid-80s, my mother started to show signs of dementia and mild paranoia.  Her personality and abilities did not change overnight, but there were subtle changes in her behavior and demeaner like not shopping, having trouble parking, or getting lost in her home city.  I shouldn't speculate because I've never even been on the NYU campus much less met the prof in question----but I did wonder if something like this was going on.

[Anon1787]

In her mid-80s, my mother started to show signs of dementia and mild paranoia.  Her personality and abilities did not change overnight, but there were subtle changes in her behavior and demeaner like not shopping, having trouble parking, or getting lost in her home city.  I shouldn't speculate because I've never even been on the NYU campus much less met the prof in question----but I did wonder if something like this was going on.

That's possible. At my alma mater an elderly professor began displaying clear signs of Alzheimer's (e.g., repeating the same lecture) and had to be replaced in the middle of the semester.

[ergative]

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.

The whole 'declining standards' thing has always struck me as largely an artifact of regression to the mean. People who become professors are far, far above average in their own educational success, and probably went to much more rigorous schools than the ones they teach at. Of course the students they teach are going to be less motivated, less prepared, and less successful than they were. And since they learned to teach probably by TAing at their own schools, the students they teach are probably going to fall short of the ones they first taught, the ones who set their Overton window.

And it is true that context changes even within a university, but that doesn't mean that standards have declined. People react strongly to things that are unfamiliar or unexpected, especially in a high-stakes situation. So professors are going to feel wrong-footed when students start demanding things like accommodations for anxiety (snowflakes!), and students are going to feel poorly served when professors try to run a classroom like it's still the 1990s (dinosaurs!). But how often have we talked about Jedi mind tricks to make teaching easier, that are really just repackaged accommodations for things like ADHD and anxiety? No-questions asked extension budgets, to be used however you like. No-questions asked exam retake policies at the end of term. Dropping the X lowest scores. All of these are things that lower the stakes of the class, simplify assessment policies, and protect student privacy when they need to take advantage of them.

I'd also like to push back, very gently, on marshwiggle's specification of 'older than a millennial.' Millennials are 40 now. The youngest are out of college. We're plenty old enough to have become old fogies. 'Kids these days' are now Gen-Z or zoomers.

[spork]

[. . . ]

I'm inclined to respect the dept chair's decision.

[. . . ]

Are you inclined to respect the lack of consequences for the proportion of students who were attempting to cheat by pasting wildly incorrect answers from quizzes used in previous years?

[marshwiggle]

The whole 'declining standards' thing has always struck me as largely an artifact of regression to the mean. People who become professors are far, far above average in their own educational success, and probably went to much more rigorous schools than the ones they teach at. Of course the students they teach are going to be less motivated, less prepared, and less successful than they were. And since they learned to teach probably by TAing at their own schools, the students they teach are probably going to fall short of the ones they first taught, the ones who set their Overton window.

And it is true that context changes even within a university, but that doesn't mean that standards have declined. People react strongly to things that are unfamiliar or unexpected, especially in a high-stakes situation. So professors are going to feel wrong-footed when students start demanding things like accommodations for anxiety (snowflakes!), and students are going to feel poorly served when professors try to run a classroom like it's still the 1990s (dinosaurs!). But how often have we talked about Jedi mind tricks to make teaching easier, that are really just repackaged accommodations for things like ADHD and anxiety? No-questions asked extension budgets, to be used however you like. No-questions asked exam retake policies at the end of term. Dropping the X lowest scores. All of these are things that lower the stakes of the class, simplify assessment policies, and protect student privacy when they need to take advantage of them.

Yes, but as time goes on students expect these things, rather than seeing them as a gift. (And I'll gladly admit that I had it easier than previous generations who had to take Latin in high school, and who had no more than a slide rule for all calculations.)

I'd also like to push back, very gently, on marshwiggle's specification of 'older than a millennial.' Millennials are 40 now. The youngest are out of college. We're plenty old enough to have become old fogies. 'Kids these days' are now Gen-Z or zoomers.

Anyone who had a mobile phone for their entire adult life including their university years had a very different experience than the generations before them. (The first GSM cell phone came out in 1992. And text messaging started the same year. So 40 year olds were able to text their friends during classes for their entire post-secondary education.)
 

[mahagonny]

This may have been mentioned before, but the more people depend on scholarship assistance the more pressure to keep their grades high enough, and the more we sympathize. Giving an OK student a 'C' becomes a slight.
Comparing today to for example 1990.

[jimbogumbo]

This may have been mentioned before, but the more people depend on scholarship assistance the more pressure to keep their grades high enough, and the more we sympathize. Giving an OK student a 'C' becomes a slight.
Comparing today to for example 1990.

The same thing was happening during the Viet Nam draft years. Only then young men didn't just lose the scholarship-they were sent to Da Nang.

[quasihumanist]

This may have been mentioned before, but the more people depend on scholarship assistance the more pressure to keep their grades high enough, and the more we sympathize. Giving an OK student a 'C' becomes a slight.
Comparing today to for example 1990.

The same thing was happening during the Viet Nam draft years. Only then young men didn't just lose the scholarship-they were sent to Da Nang.

But, generally speaking, you only had to keep a 2.0 GPA to avoid Da Nang, whereas you generally need a 3.0 GPA to keep your scholarship.