NY Times: NYU Prof Fired for Holding Standards

[Wahoo Redux]

What Does It Mean When Students Can't Pass Your Course?

Lower Deck:

The case of an NYU organic-chem prof centers on one of teaching's thorny questions.

If you've got an opinion about what's wrong with higher education today, it was probably confirmed by a recent New York Times story about the departure of an organic-chemistry professor from New York University after students complained about how he taught his course and graded their performance in it. The still-murky facts of the case have allowed it to serve as an inkblot open to interpretation.

Students these days aren't serious, can't study, and expect to be spoon-fed. Financially motivated administrators at overpriced colleges fancy themselves in the customer-service business, letting the students — and parents — who pay the bills call the shots. The bulk of instructors, who labor off of the tenure track, are expendable: With their employment conditional on keeping both the undergraduates and the administrators happy, they're unable to resist their demands.

Or perhaps professors don't necessarily like students, or know how to teach them. Some instructors are just jerks, protected by a status quo that has long mistaken punishing students for teaching them something.

Students struggle in introductory courses in many disciplines, but failure rates tend to be particularly high in STEM. Those introductory courses "have had the highest D-F-W rates on most campuses for several decades at least — in fact, most of them persist back into the '30s and '40s," says Timothy McKay, associate dean for undergraduate education at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor's arts and sciences college. "To me, this is a sign that they're unsuccessful courses."

[Wahoo Redux]

Professor-on-Reddit's response to the above article:

Darn it, I teach in computer science which definitely one of the stemmier fields out there, and I never, ever rely on high stakes testing as the sole component of student grades. None of my colleagues do either. We assign our students projects because that is where they learn to do the things employers expect. And you know what? The students increasingly are incapable of doing the projects. They wait until the last second, or have a paid "tutor" do the work for them, or simply don't bother. The students actually prefer the tests because they can regurgitate memorized factoids. The problem is, if we make the project easier, they don't learn the skills employers expect, and then they don't get hired. One of the deep dark secrets of computer science programs is that a fairly high number of graduates, especially from lesser tier schools, end up underemployed. What is the point of spending so much money on a CS degree if you end up in a helpdesk job that only requires a 2 year IT degree? Or worse, working car sales (yes, we have had graduates from our program end up in those jobs). They complain constantly that we aren't teaching them what they need to be employable, but we are - they just don't want to bother to learn it.

So I don't want to hear anyone tell me that we need to lower our standards, a term I prefer to "rigor" which sounds like a corpse.

Plus 117 comments at the time of posting.

[lightning]

Professor-on-Reddit's response to the above article:

Darn it, I teach in computer science which definitely one of the stemmier fields out there, and I never, ever rely on high stakes testing as the sole component of student grades. None of my colleagues do either. We assign our students projects because that is where they learn to do the things employers expect. And you know what? The students increasingly are incapable of doing the projects. They wait until the last second, or have a paid "tutor" do the work for them, or simply don't bother. The students actually prefer the tests because they can regurgitate memorized factoids. The problem is, if we make the project easier, they don't learn the skills employers expect, and then they don't get hired. One of the deep dark secrets of computer science programs is that a fairly high number of graduates, especially from lesser tier schools, end up underemployed. What is the point of spending so much money on a CS degree if you end up in a helpdesk job that only requires a 2 year IT degree? Or worse, working car sales (yes, we have had graduates from our program end up in those jobs). They complain constantly that we aren't teaching them what they need to be employable, but we are - they just don't want to bother to learn it.

So I don't want to hear anyone tell me that we need to lower our standards, a term I prefer to "rigor" which sounds like a corpse.

Plus 117 comments at the time of posting.

Yup. All of that. But, for some reason, STEM, especially computer science, gets a free pass and will not be scrutinized. Meanwhile, there are philosophy majors who picked up IT and software development skills along the way to, or right after, finishing their so-called "worthless" humanities degree and are doing some of the jobs that the lazy computer science students were supposed to be doing. It's maddening.

[apl68]

Professor-on-Reddit's response to the above article:

Darn it, I teach in computer science which definitely one of the stemmier fields out there, and I never, ever rely on high stakes testing as the sole component of student grades. None of my colleagues do either. We assign our students projects because that is where they learn to do the things employers expect. And you know what? The students increasingly are incapable of doing the projects. They wait until the last second, or have a paid "tutor" do the work for them, or simply don't bother. The students actually prefer the tests because they can regurgitate memorized factoids. The problem is, if we make the project easier, they don't learn the skills employers expect, and then they don't get hired. One of the deep dark secrets of computer science programs is that a fairly high number of graduates, especially from lesser tier schools, end up underemployed. What is the point of spending so much money on a CS degree if you end up in a helpdesk job that only requires a 2 year IT degree? Or worse, working car sales (yes, we have had graduates from our program end up in those jobs). They complain constantly that we aren't teaching them what they need to be employable, but we are - they just don't want to bother to learn it.

So I don't want to hear anyone tell me that we need to lower our standards, a term I prefer to "rigor" which sounds like a corpse.

Plus 117 comments at the time of posting.

Yup. All of that. But, for some reason, STEM, especially computer science, gets a free pass and will not be scrutinized. Meanwhile, there are philosophy majors who picked up IT and software development skills along the way to, or right after, finishing their so-called "worthless" humanities degree and are doing some of the jobs that the lazy computer science students were supposed to be doing. It's maddening.

What's maddening is the insinuations you see that humanities students are people who migrated to humanities courses because they couldn't handle STEM.  It's not what you major in, it's how diligently you work at it.  I would guess that most STEM programs have a great many students who have no interest in the subject, but are just majoring in it because "that's where the good jobs are."  Hence the high wash-out rates.  With the massive decline in humanities majors in recent years, I would suspect that the remaining students really want to be there, and will be motivated to work hard at what they study.

[lightning]

Professor-on-Reddit's response to the above article:

Darn it, I teach in computer science which definitely one of the stemmier fields out there, and I never, ever rely on high stakes testing as the sole component of student grades. None of my colleagues do either. We assign our students projects because that is where they learn to do the things employers expect. And you know what? The students increasingly are incapable of doing the projects. They wait until the last second, or have a paid "tutor" do the work for them, or simply don't bother. The students actually prefer the tests because they can regurgitate memorized factoids. The problem is, if we make the project easier, they don't learn the skills employers expect, and then they don't get hired. One of the deep dark secrets of computer science programs is that a fairly high number of graduates, especially from lesser tier schools, end up underemployed. What is the point of spending so much money on a CS degree if you end up in a helpdesk job that only requires a 2 year IT degree? Or worse, working car sales (yes, we have had graduates from our program end up in those jobs). They complain constantly that we aren't teaching them what they need to be employable, but we are - they just don't want to bother to learn it.

So I don't want to hear anyone tell me that we need to lower our standards, a term I prefer to "rigor" which sounds like a corpse.

Plus 117 comments at the time of posting.

Yup. All of that. But, for some reason, STEM, especially computer science, gets a free pass and will not be scrutinized. Meanwhile, there are philosophy majors who picked up IT and software development skills along the way to, or right after, finishing their so-called "worthless" humanities degree and are doing some of the jobs that the lazy computer science students were supposed to be doing. It's maddening.

What's maddening is the insinuations you see that humanities students are people who migrated to humanities courses because they couldn't handle STEM.  It's not what you major in, it's how diligently you work at it.  I would guess that most STEM programs have a great many students who have no interest in the subject, but are just majoring in it because "that's where the good jobs are."  Hence the high wash-out rates.  With the massive decline in humanities majors in recent years, I would suspect that the remaining students really want to be there, and will be motivated to work hard at what they study.

That post from reddit really struck a nerve with me because it succinctly captured all of my frustrations with the free pass that the STEM programs are getting, which really does relate to the main topic of this thread. [Here ya go Marshy. Here's that rant that you wanted to read.]

If a real computer science program were to stay true to themselves and hold the line on minimum standards, many of the programs especially at the lesser universities, would not have enough students to stay open. The many unprepared, untalented, and/or lazy students who are just there because they think the program is the ticket to a good job, would simply wash out. So in order to retain their marginal students, computer science programs have been quietly dumbing down their curriculum. It started 10-15 years ago when the math requirements started getting reduced (which I know the reduction of math requirements for STEM degrees have been getting reduced in other majors as well but it's alarming to see Calculus getting watered down or eliminated altogether in a lot of STEM programs outside of traditional engineering). Around the same time, comp sci programs started modifying their curriculum, at great time expense to faculty, so that some of the assessments looked more like "real world" problem solving scenarios. Students were then working in groups to solve real challenges that a company would try to solve. The idea was that the students who were there to get a good job, would want to do that enthusiastically, instead of taking multiple choice tests about object-oriented theory, doing math, programming solutions to puzzles, etc. Like the reddit poster said, that's not working, either. They really would rather take tests, but the students can't pass tests either. Other retention ploys like creating video game programs or less math-intensive-less-programming-intensive IT-related programs that center around business, IT management, new product design, front-end web development, UI/UX, or tech start-ups, and shuttling failing computer science students into these aforementioned sweeter flavors of traditional computer science programs, have also met similar fates.

So, attempts at curricular solutions to retention have largely failed at retention. There are many students graduating from some computer science programs who are unemployable in the field and feel that their STEM degree is "worthless," just like a humanities degree. If a computer science faculty tried to reverse this trend, and hold the line on standards in their classes, they would be subtly shown the door or "non-rewarded." The only option left, when all attempts at curricular solutions have failed, for these hapless computer science programs is to lower their standards, making their degrees "worthless" like a humanities degree. But unlike the humanities program, computer science programs get away with it (at least for now) because they are STEM. Right now, if the holder of a computer science degree is working checkout at a grocery store, no one is saying that his/her computer science is a "worthless" degree. If the same grocery store worker had a humanities degree, people would be saying "Ha, told you so--don't you wish you majored in something else other than the 'worthless' humanities." If comp science programs don't start holding standards again, comp science programs will become "worthless," also--and nobody will want to major in it anymore--not because it's hard, but because it's truly worthless.

We're not there yet, but we're headed that way.

Meanwhile, on the other end, there is another pressure that is accelerating the problem that computer science programs are facing. There are many, many students from fields outside of computer science, many in the humanities, who are getting good IT jobs in software development, network administration, database programming/admin, etc, and they do it without a computer science degree or even an IT degree. There are many IT workers out there who majored in anything from English lit. to philosophy to music to art to ancient languages and other non-STEM programs, who find their way into jobs that the comp science majors should be doing. They just pick up the skills along the way. There are enough of these examples outside of IT who get jobs in IT, that we really should be questioning the value of some IT programs. But we don't because it's STEM . . . . at least for now, we don't question the value of IT and computer science programs.

Kudos to that NYU chemistry professor. He has exposed a rot in STEM. It's not too late for some  STEM programs to turn it around, but if universities continue to starve their programs and base academic program viability primarily on butts-in-seats, the spread of the rot in STEM is inevitable, because who wants to lose their job because there are no students in their programs because their degree program is too hard (except for an 84-year-old retired Ivy league professor who has nothing to lose)?

[Cheerful]

Thanks for sharing these important insights and experiences, lightning.

I wonder, is the watering down of standards unique to, or most common in, the United States or is it also happening in countries with which the U.S. competes?  I imagine there are problems, including corruption, elsewhere.  Still, if U.S. is mostly alone in the dumbing down, U.S. will suffer the consequences.

[quasihumanist]

Thanks for sharing these important insights and experiences, lightning.

I wonder, is the watering down of standards unique to, or most common in, the United States or is it also happening in countries with which the U.S. competes?  I imagine there are problems, including corruption, elsewhere.  Still, if U.S. is mostly alone in the dumbing down, U.S. will suffer the consequences.

Germany (and Austria and Switzerland) is well-known on holding the line here.  About half of students fail out of their first year of university, and that's considering only about half of the population is eligible to attend a university in the first place.  (Students are tracked from middle-school age into vocational or academic high schools, and only academic high schools prepare their students for the Abitur, which is the high school leaving exam everyone must pass to be eligible to attend university.)

Part of the reason this works is that they have managed to run their economy so that people who don't graduate from college but instead get vocational training manage to get good, well-paying jobs, but this part of the economy has been creaking for many years.  Walk around Zuerich and notice all the empty barber shops employing graduates of hair cutting schools.

Watering down the standards at weaker schools doesn't really hurt the economy, because the only people going to these schools in the first place are people who couldn't have met real standards, and no one out there doing hiring actually confuses these fake degrees with real degrees.  It really shouldn't be that surprising that Stanford degrees in whatever major are worth a lot and University of Southwest Northeast State University in whatever major are worthless.

The real problem is that our economy doesn't have enough good jobs for dumb people, and that really isn't fixable because automation has created an enormous difference in productivity between a smart person (who can operate above the API) and a dumb one (who can't).

[jerseyjay]

The real problem is that our economy doesn't have enough good jobs for dumb people, and that really isn't fixable because automation has created an enormous difference in productivity between a smart person (who can operate above the API) and a dumb one (who can't).

Actually, there are many jobs for dumb people. For example, university administration. The problem is that there are not that many jobs for people without higher education, which is not the same thing.

[downer]

The real problem is that our economy doesn't have enough good jobs for dumb people, and that really isn't fixable because automation has created an enormous difference in productivity between a smart person (who can operate above the API) and a dumb one (who can't).

Actually, there are many jobs for dumb people. For example, university administration. The problem is that there are not that many jobs for people without higher education, which is not the same thing.

Seems a bit harsh on the administrators. I think there are too many of them and their jobs are often largely unnecessary. They often create busy work for others. But there's skill in all that. And a good dean can do a lot of good. It takes a lot of skill to deal with faculty and help departments thrive.

There are jobs for people without university degrees. Some are very skilled. Some are not. They are often demanding and tiring jobs.

[mahagonny]

Actually, there are many jobs for dumb people. For example, university administration. The problem is that there are not that many jobs for people without higher education, which is not the same thing.

And some of them produce not just wasted time and money, but toxicity, such as DEI positions, depending somewhat on who's doing them and how they are handled.

[jerseyjay]

Seems a bit harsh on the administrators. I think there are too many of them and their jobs are often largely unnecessary. They often create busy work for others. But there's skill in all that. And a good dean can do a lot of good. It takes a lot of skill to deal with faculty and help departments thrive.

There are jobs for people without university degrees. Some are very skilled. Some are not. They are often demanding and tiring jobs.

To do the job well requires skill and intelligence. Many administrators do not do the job well. But my point is that the post I was referring to confounded skill/intelligence with university education and that's just wrong. Many jobs that do not require any education require quite a bit of skill/intelligence, and many jobs that require a PhD do not. That's leaving aside the fact that even many jobs that do not require much skill are still staffed by people with intelligence, and many people who have a particular type of skill or intelligence lack other kinds. To be honest, I think if you took all my university's professors and made them janitors, many would really flounder. I mean, many of our professors cannot seem to master things like changing the paper in the xerox machine. So throwing around terms like "dumb" and "smart" is...sort of dumb.

[Caracal]

To be honest, I think if you took all my university's professors and made them janitors, many would really flounder.

I certainly would. I'm just bad at all kinds of basic spatial tasks. When I worked at a retail job during the summers as an undergrad, I was awful at running a register when things got busy. I couldn't really go fast enough and the more I tried the more frazzled I got. At the end of the night I'd always end up 19 dollars short or something because I gave somebody a 20 in change instead of a 1 or something.

[mahagonny]

To be honest, I think if you took all my university's professors and made them janitors, many would really flounder.

I certainly would. I'm just bad at all kinds of basic spatial tasks. When I worked at a retail job during the summers as an undergrad, I was awful at running a register when things got busy. I couldn't really go fast enough and the more I tried the more frazzled I got. At the end of the night I'd always end up 19 dollars short or something because I gave somebody a 20 in change instead of a 1 or something.

Some young drivers can park a car easily by the third try. Other drivers are still having trouble after 20 years. I acquired my respect for truck drivers the first time I tried to back up my rented U-Haul towing a travel trailer. I don't know if they could do algebra though. But it didn't matter that day that I can.

[artalot]

Part of the issue is that we don't pay well or value service jobs. In many parts of Europe people make a career of hospitality (restaurant server, hotel concierge, checking tickets on the train, etc.) because it pays a living wage and they are respected professionals. Here, we treat them like crap and pay them even worse. But in Europe these are solid careers for people who don't want a college degree.
That said, the academic tracking that happens in Europe is really classist and problematic. I'm not advocating for that, and I do think if someone wants to go to college, they should be able to. I just don't think that college should be the only path to a well-paying, respectable job.

[ciao_yall]

Part of the issue is that we don't pay well or value service jobs. In many parts of Europe people make a career of hospitality (restaurant server, hotel concierge, checking tickets on the train, etc.) because it pays a living wage and they are respected professionals. Here, we treat them like crap and pay them even worse. But in Europe these are solid careers for people who don't want a college degree.
That said, the academic tracking that happens in Europe is really classist and problematic. I'm not advocating for that, and I do think if someone wants to go to college, they should be able to. I just don't think that college should be the only path to a well-paying, respectable job.

Any honest living is respectable.

And anyone who contributes should earn a family wage.

If it means consumer goods and groceries are a little more expensive and taxes are a little higher so everyone can have a decent standard of living, then so be it.