NY Times: NYU Prof Fired for Holding Standards

[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.

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.

And this bothers me a lot because it means in effect that a "C" is failing. If your "C" for that student is typical of the grades he receives, his scholarship money is gone and it's as if he flunked out. You don't want him to be deprived of the chance to study and succeed just because he's a "C" student. So if the "C" student starts getting "B's" there is no "B" grade available any more, for the student who performs a little better than just enough to get by, but not among the best performers in the class. Or maybe it's that there's no "A" left.
And this never gets discussed. It's just that you find yourself in Rome and you do what the Romans do.
It's like the joke about Lake Wobegon. All the kids are above average. Yeah...right.
Some of this wouldn't happen if college tuition and fees were lower.

[Hibush]

You don't want him to be deprived of the chance to study and succeed just because he's a "C" student.

This assumption is the critical one. What if the scholarship funder does not want to provide that opportunity to C students, because they want to fund B-and-above students? Then the assumption clearly doesn't apply to that source of funds.

I'm all for public funding for students who get value out of a college education and get Bs and Cs even when applying themselves. That funding should have a GPA cutoff at 1.3 or a different criterion for seriousness entirely.

[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.

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.

Yeah, I know. I was responding to the pressure on the instructor not to give the lower grade.

[downer]

[. . . ]

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?

I'm not really sure what you are referring to. Are you saying the NYU Chem Dept didn't care about cheating? Is there any evidence that there were actions it could take to punish or eliminate cheating that it didn't?

[marshwiggle]

[. . . ]

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?

This is a case where the challenge of proving cheating is unnecessary. Students this clueless are (obviously) very easily defeated in the attempts by very basic measures. If they are not profiting by their attempts to cheat, then trying to punish them for attempting it involves a lot of effort for very little tangible payoff. (Getting them kicked out rather than just allowing them to fail out will only matter if they're trying to use their transcript in the future. If they failed out, that's not much good to them regardless.)

[dr_evil]

What bothered me is that these students were complaining about the class being too hard. Organic chemistry is known to be quite difficult, often stated as the hardest class people who are not chem. majors take. It's very different from general chemistry - less math and more problem solving. For many, it's the first time they start to get to why things react the way they do, plus the first time they are introduced to the fact that there can be competing reactions.

I just do not understand why some administrators listen to people complaining about a class being too hard, especially one with the reputation organic has, or students expecting to be graded on effort (something we can't know about even if we wanted to).

[downer]

There's no good evidence that the lack of contract renewal was because the administrators thought the course was too hard or that they were concerned that the students thought the course too hard. We don't know how the administrators made their decision. There's some evidence that the professor was dismissive and scornful of students. There's no evidence that other faculty in the same department have lower standards.

There was of course the NYT article, which was a weak piece of journalism.

[Ruralguy]

Since I grade using partial credit and I take attendance into account (including office hours---which I don't require, and it can't offset attendance, but it can offset participation) , I think there is some attempt by me and others to take into account "effort." That being said, if all is said and done, and a person gets  20% on the final, then they do.  The question then becomes, 'Did 10 (or 100, or whatever) other folks also get 20% on the final, and if they did, why did they?"

[kaysixteen]

Random points:

1) The NYT article demonstrates that, astoundingly, the NYU deans in their letter actually used verbiage to the effect that this step was taken specifically in order to throw a bone to the tuition payers.   What the hell were they thinking?   They are trying to placate students and parents, but every med school admission cmte in the country will now have to be wondering, every time it sees an NYU applicant with, say, an A- in orgo, exactly how legit said grade is?  Is this what NYU really wants?   And does it also want future adjuncts worrying about whether their continued employment is contingent upon customer complaints about academic rigor?

2) Are we also to start being concerned with whether Prof. Old Timer is 'dismissive' of students?   What exactly does this mean, and why, necessarily, is it bad?

3) Nothing in the letters or statements of the university suggests anything about the prospect that the guy, 84, was in the early stages of dementia.   I confess to not being overly impressed with any evidence-free suggestions that Prof. Old Timer might be dealing with dementia.

[jerseyjay]

The NYT refers to the course as a weed-out course and a stumble course. The first means that it is designed to prevent large numbers of people from making it past. The second means that it has been identified as a course that many students do poorly in. It seems like the various "stakeholders" at NYU--the chemistry department, the medical school, the dean, etc.--need to sit down and figure out what the course really is. Is it supposed to "weed out" students? Then it would seem that the course is doing its job and student complaints should be worn as a badge of honor. Or are students supposed to be able to pass the course? In which case complaints should be taken seriously. The school cannot really have it both ways, and it is unfair to make a professor navigate these contradictory winds--especially a non-tenured one.

Of course the professor might be in the early stages of dementia. But there is no indication that this is the case, and even if so, it does not detract from the basic problem.

Also, I am not sure this is a case of "students today are so weak." I have heard similar situations in the past. What I think is different about this is (a) NYU is so expensive; (b) the professor in question is weak enough to be fired yet strong enough to be well known in his field; (c) the NYT devoted a full-page article about it.

[downer]

If you don't think professors at some schools are not in danger regarding the tone of their emails to students and  to their classes, then you haven't been paying attention.

I say this as someone who often sails pretty close to the edge of being sharp in my comments.

[mahagonny]

The story even found its way on to late night TV (Gutfeld). Has legs. Naturally, being conservatives they sided with organic chemistry.

ETA:

If you don't think professors at some schools are not in danger regarding the tone of their emails to students and  to their classes, then you haven't been paying attention.

I say this as someone who often sails pretty close to the edge of being sharp in my comments.

I get that. but, not to quarrel with you: a friend of mine has a PhD in chemistry from one of the best schools. He said 'my thesis advisor told me "you can call me Dr. and you can call me [first name]. I'll probably call you dumbass." My friend just laughs about it now. I said 'how could you stand it?' He answers 'he was a good teacher.'

[Anon1787]

If you don't think professors at some schools are not in danger regarding the tone of their emails to students and  to their classes, then you haven't been paying attention.

I say this as someone who often sails pretty close to the edge of being sharp in my comments.

For NYU to take what it admits is the unusual step of offering students to review their grades and retroactively withdraw from the course (in addition to not renewing his contract), I would hope that there was something worse than that (or anything else mentioned in the story) for the sake of NYU's academic reputation.

[kaysixteen]

Probably be a better thing if more professors employed the Red Foreman school of pedagogy.

[mythbuster]

I would like to clarify one thing. I teach a course that is often labeled by (pre-med) students as a "weed-out" course. This does NOT mean that course has been deliberately designed to fail students.  I keep seeing that characterization and it's just not true, and rather offensive. Students can and do earn As in these courses with no curve involved, so they are not built to to be deliberately impossible. Even when the exam average drops below 60.

My course is labelled by students as such because they find it hard, with a heavy emphasis on application of concepts and problem solving. Higher order Blooms levels. Memorization MIGHT get you to a bare C, at best. You have to actually understand the terminology and the concepts and think through what happens if step #3 in a process goes awry, or is never activated, etc. This requires time and deep thought in your studying, which most students are not good at or are unwilling to put the effort into. We see in our "weed out" courses many students who refuse to attend extra help session, or do the supplemental homework, or in any other way use the pile of extra resources that we provide.

You can lead a horse to water, with instructions to drink and cup, and then you might have to watch them drown. Which is what I see in my course every semester.