9 ms·

NYU Chemistry Professor Fired After Students Said His Class Was Too Hard

80 points by siva7 4y ago

lvl102 4y ago
NYU is not an elite institution. It’s a local school with mediocre students.
- nicolas_t 4y ago
  My only contact with NYU alumni was someone who had a master in ITP at NYU and was very proud of it. It's supposedly described as an art school for engineers and at the same time an engineering school for artists. I can't judge her art but I can definitely say resolutely that she was not an engineer nor did it bring enough engineering knowledge to talk to engineers in her role as a PM. The running gag among the team was that she would confidently say utter non-sense while making it sound technical. Enough to fool non-engineers but extremely funny to the actual engineers that worked with her.
  - speed_spread 4y ago
    That's sad. Sounds like she didn't know that she didn't know.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    > It's supposedly described as an art school for engineers and at the same time an engineering school for artists. By detractors or publicity? Because as insults go that’s just brutal.
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
This appears to be mostly reporting on this New York Times article https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/nyu-organic-chemistry-petition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/nyu-organic-chemistry-... so I think that should be considered the original source.
- hikingsimulator 4y ago
  I guess it was posted to avoid the paywall discussion that would arise from posting the NYT -- the FAQ discourages that.
tromp 4y ago
> According to The New York Times, 82 of Jones' 350 students signed the petition last spring; it alleged that too many of them were failing and that this was unacceptable. The students cited emotional and mental health complaints to make the case that Jones ought to make the class less difficult. > "We urge you to realize that a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students' learning and well-being a priority and reflects poorly on the chemistry department as well as the institution as a whole," the petition read. > The Times article suggests that throughout the pandemic, Jones made a number of accommodations for struggling students. He reduced the difficulty of his exams, but students were still failing them. > "Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate," said Jones. > The article does note that the petition never called for Jones to be fired. But the university evidently decided that the best way to resolve the situation was to turn him loose. > His departure is certainly a loss for NYU's academic caliber. After all, Jones is a lion in the field of organic chemistry, publishing 225 papers in his 40-year career. He literally wrote the textbook, "Organic Chemistry," which weighs in at 1,300 pages. It's sad that professors are strongly incentivized to lower difficulty and grade generously until a large majority of students pass, without having mastered the material the professor is supposed to be teaching them. No professor ever got fired for making things too easy or for imparting too little knowledge.
- deliriumchn 4y ago
  This is very sad to read to be honest. My prof. was an old school guy who was author for few very in-depth books about organic chemistry. He was very, very demanding and his class was very hard, our median scores were around 20-30% lower than in any other class, but in the end, I can def. say that after two years studying with that dude, it was my strongest subject, I could literally spit pages of text about anything in his exams in the end. It was very hard, but it was very worth it and very fun to actually understand whats going on inside large chemical reactors. Ofc, there are some teachers/professors that are making things too hard with no purpose (like robot-reading walls of text in a super speed mode and then demanding you to remember them on exam word by word), but some of them just have high standards and its a good thing
  - 4y ago
wirthjason 4y ago
I’ve never taken organic chemistry but I always hated classes where the discussion after getting test results went like this: “Aw man, I got a 40.” “That’s great, most people got 20s, that’s the highest score”
- gregshap 4y ago
  I always loved the classes that had at least a couple of exams like that
- sweettea 4y ago
  Why? If a test is supposed to measure your mastery of material relative to others', and point out your areas of potential improvement, a test with a full range of scores from 0 to 100% seems most effective. A test with a range of 0-40 is, agreed, less effective; but still better than a range of 80-100: an overly hard test merely points out that everyone has room for improvement.
  - nicolas_t 4y ago
    Exactly, a well designed hard test is great. Besides being a test, it's also a learning opportunity. By confronting your limits, you get to learn aspects of the material you didn't know. Past years tests like this are also great when studying the material (assuming that the teacher is decent and renews his tests every year)
civilized 4y ago
It's kind of interesting that libertarian Reason Magazine feels the need to comment on this. Isn't this just Capitalism Working Great, serving the student/parent-customers who are paying the bills? I know there's more nuance to this - you can disagree with what a firm does in a free market economy and assert it's bad for society. But it seems like, from a libertarian perspective, the focus should be on how this is bad for the university, and will reduce its signaling value to employers or something. Because if the customers want a diploma mill, and there's no self-interest downside to the university becoming a diploma mill, then in a libertarian worldview it's generally quite right and good that the university becomes a diploma mill.
- jamesblonde 4y ago
  That's what some of my students believe, but is wrong in socialized education countries. Here, the government are my paymasters. They pay me to train students to become engineers. And they set the bar. And students need to reach that bar. So, we are not in-hoc to the students. They are not consumers paying for a service. They are in a privileged position that they are receiving an education, an investment, and it is their responsibility to reach the desired standard. That said, we also have some (not that much) pressure to pass more students, as the university makes more money.
  - civilized 4y ago
    That sounds really, really nice, genuinely. In the US though, I fear we would fail just as badly on this front with fully government-funded universities. We have pervasive cultural problems and I worry the government would institutionalize them rather than acting as a bulwark against them. In many localities, government-funded K-12 has the exact same problems exemplified by this orgo prof's firing, except the taxpayer is compelled to fund the dysfunction. The silver lining is the charter school movement, which at least sometimes allows families trapped in bad school systems to escape to a better culture, but even in the charter system there is a good amount of exploitation masquerading as education. I think the "enlightened" libertarian view might be needed here - if your university becomes a diploma mill, it ceases to be useful to employers. Eventually, students realize it no longer provides the signaling value it once did and go elsewhere. And gossiping about the failure of standards hopefully accelerates this process.
truth777 4y ago
- civilized 4y ago
  Personally if this happens I'm going to blame metaverse surgery training, not easy orgo classes.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    Yeah but I can’t melodramatically soapbox about that
hwers 4y ago
Hey as a european where I doubt anything like this would ever happen maybe I should take the perspective on this as a good thing for me in the sense of a lot less future competition
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Should the US view it as a good thing that Europe's economy is crumbling under an energy crisis so less future competition for us? I think no.
  - yonaguska 4y ago
    Unfortunately, our leaders(American) are very pleased at the prospect. https://youtu.be/GK3u8up_HLA https://youtu.be/GK3u8up_HLA
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      Well it is what it is. Russia has doomed Europe to a long period of economic decline. The economic opportunity for the US is vast. This could be a period of economic power gains not seen since the end of WWII. To not recognize this would be foolish. It's not even accurate to paint it as "stealing" or "capitalizing" on Europe's weakness. They simply won't be able to produce things, and someone needs to, so it might as well be the US. Europe cannot be helped even if we wanted to.
propter_hoc 4y ago
I read the New York Times article on this yesterday and discussed it with my wife (neuroscientist). Our discussion went like this: Wife: "This is bonkers, the entire point of orgo is to cull the pre-med students. When I took orgo they showed the planned curve and explicitly said: one-third of you will fail." Me: "Yeah, we had classes like that in electrical engineering as well, it was understood that that was the point of the class. It is hard to avoid the implication that Gen Z is really spectacularly entitled." Wife: "It's the explosion effect. They have learned they should feel entitled to good things, like being treated well no matter their identity or background or whatever. But they also are entitled for other areas where entitlement is not justified." I thought that was a pretty insightful thought!
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Are you millennials? Because if so, welcome to the generation of older folks complaining about the younger folks.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    I find this bizarre. Nearly all of the systemic issues faced by Millennials are because Boomers feel entitled to a house that appreciates massively, and retirement account that only goes in one direction, etc. Boomers have massive economic entitlement. Gen Z have massive social entitlement. And Millennials are caught somewhere in the middle not feeling entitled to either, but struggling nonetheless.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      The only difference between Boomers and Millennials is chronological. They both have the same sense of entitlement. They both have the same obsession with money. They both have the same persecution complex. And they love to blame each other for everything rather than face up to the fact that life isn't fair.
      - voisin 4y ago
anotherhue 4y ago
I see versions of this all the time. My suspicion is that we’ve take the ‘customer is always right’ concept too far out of business and into unrelated (notionally) fields. By definition these students take this course because they do not understand the subject, how can they then be qualified to determine how hard it should be? The article also implies some poor manners from the professor which is an entirely different issue.
- sn41 4y ago
  This is a wrong analogy, I feel. A student being a customer is not quite right. I think the analogy of a sports coach and a mentee is more appropriate. The purpose of the coach is to train the youngster to become competitive enough for the league. It's not to certify that "you are great, the game is rigged", just because the mentee pays the coach.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    > The purpose of the coach is to train the youngster to become competitive. And sometimes that’s not possible. If you’re 5 foot nothing you’re not making it to the NBA. Some people couldn’t pass organic chemistry with a decade to succeed at it. People are not equal in their capabilities.
    - voisin 4y ago
      > Some people couldn’t pass organic chemistry with a decade to succeed at it. These people should have never been allowed into the program if this course is that important. Filter better. The NBA raises the bar on anyone trying to get in that’s “5 foot nothing”.
      - barry-cotter 4y ago
        The NBA does not actually stop people playing basketball. It does not stop people putting in thousands of hours trying to get to their minimum bar. Organic Chemistry 1 is not trying to get into the NBA. It’s trying to get into a high school basketball team. Thousands of people do well enough at high school basketball to play university level. Most of them have no hope of playing professionally, anywhere. Organic Chemistry is only “that important” if you’re going to study chemistry, medicine or possibly biology. If you can’t pass it you’re not going to make it. Weeder courses exist to fail people who wouldn’t have made it sooner rather than later. You can do it at community colleges or open enrollment universities with no admissions standards like CUNY.
delaaxe 4y ago
So there are no bad teachers?
jonstewart 4y ago
84 year-old untenured professor’s annual contract not renewed…
etempleton 4y ago
Grade inflation is very much an issue right now at all levels of academia and this is the primary issue. Parents or students complain and leadership or the teacher capitulate. It was only exacerbated by the pandemic. Of course there is the chance this professor is unfairly hard or has lost his touch as a teacher, but this has always existed. Half my friends who took organic chemistry failed or barely passed it the first time. The mentality then was to study harder and try again.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  > It was only exacerbated by the pandemic No, it was exacerbated by ever increasing tution fees. You don't see this 'costumer' pressure on professors in fully funded public universities elsewhere in the world. You are being given the privelege of access to higher education. However if you suddenly have to fork multiple years worth of savings to access it, it is likely that your level of demands (even if not legitimate in this case) is increased.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Other issue is that there is just too many people with degrees. In past just passing meant that it was good enough filter. Now the GPA must also enter into picture, which drives demand for grade inflation lot higher. If this aspect didn't exist, I doubt grade inflation would either...
  - etempleton 4y ago
    This issue also persisted in public school where students were passed along. That has nothing to do with tuition.
- d0gbread 4y ago
  Maybe the mindset has shifted but I'm unclear why that's a bad thing. The pass rate at my university was similar. If this has been constant (that so many people have to fail and retake) why does the curriculum stay the same? The goal is to learn the material. If you're training for a marathon you don't sign up for a marathon, fail, then sign up for another. You slow down and work up to it in successful chunks. Organic chem seems like the defacto class that people struggle with, but the same was true at my institution for physics and other classes. Maybe instead we should be looking at a different or longer track for that material, or even earlier education that is producing students that might not have the math and science foundation out of high school?
johnkpaul 4y ago
I have an NYU chemistry degree and I took quite a lot of organic. I wasn’t pre-med and had planned, at the time, to get a PhD with research in organic chemistry/material science. Even though my classes were with this guy’s predecessor’s predecessor, everything described about the challenge of this class and the complaints from premeds was exactly the same ~20 years ago. Organic Chemistry 1, 2 and 3 at NYU have always been considered challenging and “weed out”. I was and am very proud of my moderately successful academics in chemistry from NYU and find it a bit sad that the expectations given to me are changing.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  When I start to think about. Organic chemistry is in subset of courses that actually train people for their work, that is being in chemistry. So everyone should expect certain level of competence from those passing the course. Now to use it for filtering med-school students seems the broken aspect.
- shbooms 4y ago
  > Organic Chemistry 1, 2 and 3 at NYU have always been considered challenging and “weed out”. It seems this "weed out" culture around orgo is very much an established thing in the world of the sciences/pre-med which is a little strange to someone like me that is not in that world. How come one particular subject is used so universally to weed people out as opposed to just weeding out the bottom x% of people with lowest overall GPA's? Is orgo so much more important to scientists and medical professional compared to other subjects such as biology, anatomy, etc?
  - johnkpaul 4y ago
    It’s “weed out” from the perspective of medical schools, not chemistry path people. It is a challenging subject for many, but the people who aren’t premed have an inherent interest to work through the material, imho. I think that if the MCAT removed all organic chemistry, organic would lose all the “weed out” categorization
ldoughty 4y ago
I don't teach chemistry... And I certainly don't have a bag sitter (I hope) towards students... But I still sympathize with the professor... You get 16 weeks or so to teach students a topic... Some topics are MUCH harder than others (learn Microsoft office suite, vs get the Linux+ certification). I think schools need to do a better job splitting difficult courses, but I think there's a fundamental dislike of course series, since that raises costs to get an education, and in more specialized areas, it would be hard to get enough students to take the second course if people only need or take part 1.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Reminds me of this one teacher we had, he was teaching err. Database abstractions and data modeling and the like. I don't think he was a very good teacher, very uptight and "just so" and whatnot, kind of old fashioned. I heard through the grapevine that he was actually fired at some point, citing incompetence. He sued, basically saying "prove it"; the school couldn't and had to hire him back. I mean I didn't like the class but it was just the one, it was manageable enough.
TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
Students are paying to get a diploma, not to learn something. Customer must be always satisfied, that's the reason why private universities are destined to produce useless and unskilled absolvents.
diceduckmonk 4y ago
Lots of mention of the word orgo here but the terminology may not be colloquial everywhere. Before college, I hung out on the premed forums and then told my peers about “orgo”. They were confused and corrected me that I meant “ochem”.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  When writing for a general audience we should all avoid local or subject related slang.
- dekhn 4y ago
  both terms are widely used. sneakers and tennis shoes, soda and pop.
rabite 4y ago
I remember when I wanted to be a mechanical engineer. After a statics and dynamics class, I realized I was just not mentally fit for the job, and decided to be in the Internet advertising industry instead. Stupid me, the right answer was to sue and demand a degree in something I couldn't have managed to perform at. These younguns are geniuses.
ojr 4y ago
His book is 1300 pages and $200, an example of an unaffordable college book that will cause some students who can’t afford $200 books in the beginning of the semester to fall behind. The system only wants student who can afford expensive textbooks unlike a public highschool where the textbooks are free. I’m an idiot in higher level academia standards . I’m a Senior Software Engineer in real life though.
- dekhn 4y ago
  The $xxx I spent on my expensive science books in college have paid for themselves many times over. Not just in job opportunities- the chance to see summarized, organized information that represents the state of the art in 10+K of human years of knowledge gathering.
nemo44x 4y ago
This is what equity is. The gradual decay of elite institutions into mediocrity. NYU and others aren’t actually a signifier that you were among the brightest of your cohort but rather just a brand now. The end result is our brightest and cheated and our entire nation suffers for it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dendriti 4y ago
  Any university should be able to hire and fire teaching professors at will if they're not doing a satisfactory job. Clearly this professor wasn't. I don't feel like anyone was cheated.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    I didn't say they can't. But they are not a respectable university any longer nor are they considered elite. You have to assume that affirmative action has thinned the talent at the university to the point the student body can no longer get through the rigor that separated the smart kids from the elite kids. Because the university is graded on the quality of student and the quality of student continues to decline, these once elite universities are fading.
    - trs8080 4y ago
      Ah yes, this is the minorities' fault. > You have to assume that affirmative action has thinned the talent at the university to the point the student body can no longer get through the rigor that separated the smart kids from the elite kids Oh, do you? So affirmative action has pushed out the elite whites and now mediocrity reigns?
      - nemo44x 4y ago
        > Oh, do you? So affirmative action has pushed out the elite whites and now mediocrity reigns? It's actually pushed out mainly elite Asians. Just look at acceptance rates and the scores required to get in based on race and sex. Asians of both sexes have to far surpass everyone else and white males in particular have to as well. Because of this, the student body is made up of more and more people that may be quite smart, but are not elite. They don't belong in these institutions and the institutions can no longer be considered elite because their student body no longer is. The evidence is things like this story. The student body has weakened in intellectual ability enough to the point that this institution felt compelled to lower their standard, which also means American universities have lost some standing globally. I can only expect that the students coming from these institutions are not at the level they used to be.
ankaAr 4y ago
I'm not seeing how is the failing rate on his course. Only that near 30% of the students signed the letter. It is maybe that number?. 30% failing rate is not bad, yes, the education community must to do something about those students concerns (maybe opening a pre orgo course or offer some tutors), but if that is the failing rate is not bad. What I'm saying is that when you are teaching the failing rate is something you must to lower, not lowering the quality of your course, but being flexible with your teaching system. I'm not seeing why you should remove the teacher here. And that is bad.
viraptor 4y ago
There are comments jumping to conclusions, but the article is so thin about the details, that maybe we should step back a little. We don't know what the whole complaint contained. We know there were other issues ("and multiple student complaints about his dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension, and opacity about grading"). Maybe it was only about the pass ratio. Or maybe he was a terrible teacher. They show his academic success as something to consider, even though it means nothing about the teaching abilities. I've had a bad teacher at uni at one of the "hard/filter" courses. Many people failed. But I'm sure some of them did because the teacher was a dick to them.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  He's been teaching there since 2007. Has he been a bad teacher all that time or is it simply that the students this year are especially poor at organic chemistry (or academic work of any kind)?
  - viraptor 4y ago
    Yes, that's exactly the kind of context we should know before having an opinion about him or the petitioning students.
subroutine 4y ago
This article is so upsetting. The worst students among a cohort of underperforming zoomers (as compared to historical cohorts) were offered a free redo (retroactive withdrawal) of the course without consequence. And that wasn't good enough, so they pressed until the uni fired this prof (who had previously won teaching awards). I'm sure they celebrated their great victory and validation, by further slagging this prof on tiktok. Where is my cane...
- carrychains 4y ago
  The students were not petitioning to have him fired and were reportedly surprised with that outcome. The petition also seems to have circulated before the redo offer. This is on the uni.
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
Isn't this the logic of affirmative action extended to encompass a greater number of categories and cases? If the premise is that we require doctors to meet certain criteria (putting to one side the soundness of the criteria or the means by which students are assessed in relation to those criteria), then it doesn't matter why someone fails to meet those criteria, only that they do. This would be because we prioritize the good of the patient over professional ambitions. However, to soften standards would mean prioritizing professional ambitions (or actually, the desire for social status) over the good of the patient. That seems to correspond with the culture of radical individualism (emphasis on radical; respect for the individuality of others wanes with increasing egocentrism) and obsession with status that we are often accused of having today.
dang 4y ago
Related: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33070843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33070843 - Oct 2022 (83 comments)
madmax96 4y ago
There is a funny notion that professors work for students. They don't. They hardly even work for the university. It is more correct to say that they are affiliated with the university. At top universities, professors bring in grant money or else they lose their job. The university takes a portion of the grant before any of the money is spent. Then, the professor pays the university from the remaining money for their graduate student's tuition and stipend, to use university technology, and rent for research space. Next, the university only pays professors for 9 months out of the year. So, another chunk of grant money finances the professor's salary for the remaining 3 months. Top universities scrape billions off research grants annually. These grants are won by faculty members. They dwarf salaries. Faculty members bring in more cash to the university than their salaries are worth. In reality, professors finance the university. Students are mistaken if they think they are their professor's employer.
- rahimnathwani 4y ago
  This guy was an adjunct.
foxyv 4y ago
I wish colleges wouldn't hate on failing a class so much. Failing a class is an excellent learning experience allowing students to realize the extent of their knowledge and ability. Failure forces reassessment of priorities. Instead, colleges make it a black mark against a student to be avoided at all costs. I mean, how hard is it for these students to just take the class again with their added knowledge? Why not just overwrite the previous grade with the new one? Why do they run these classes in series so that anyone who fails pretty much loses an entire year? Why is it such a huge deal that they had to fire a teacher over it? It's not like colleges aren't getting enough money. Especially NYU! Acadamia is so gung-ho about research and papers but so freaking lazy about teaching. Just look at what they pay TAs and associate professors!
- throwaway2016a 4y ago
  In most colleges your grade on your transcript will get overwritten by the new grade if you take the class again. And your GPA will be adjusted accordingly. Don't forget that NYU credits (if the Google results I found are accurate) are $2,020 and Chemistry is usually a 4 credit class. You don't get refunds for failed classes so that is a $8,000 loss. And it might delay graduation. It has real consequences. But it also sounds like the professor was bad at writing exam questions. He was failing people at a statistically improbable rate. I used to teach at a university and we generally aimed for a bell curve. And if too many people were on the A side of the bell curve the odds are your class was too easy and if too many people were on the F side it was too hard. Either way when taken as the statistical aggregate it is usually the professor's fault not the student's.
  - foxyv 4y ago
    I had a lot of professors that seemed to hate students and take pride in making them fail horribly. They took pride that their bell curves were way to the left. I learned the least in those classes because they were designed to not teach anything. Sometimes classes are too easy because they teach really well. I had an astrophysics professor who spent a lot of time learning how to teach subjects. His classes seemed remarkably easy, yet we covered WAY more material than the 30% mean bell curve ones. He was just REALLY good at presenting the material and cementing knowledge using interactive learning and other really cool teaching methods.
BrandoElFollito 4y ago
I was a student, and then an academic teacher in Europe in the late 90's. I mention Europe because the students were not any kind of "customers", but just plain students. I had classes where the teacher was a pain in the ass, at the middle or top of the medieval structure which was academia (this is one of the reasons I left). Their classes were very hard to show how brilliant they were. Usually the courses were crap. As a young teacher, I had all the more complicated graduates. By that I mean ones where physics was just a compulsory step but they build not care less. I was quite lax: if they learned the basic stuff, they passed. The better ones, who cared about the grade and made efforts had very good marks. And then there were the ones who did not even open the book and expected to pass because I wild not fail too many people. I did, had discussions with the dean, sometimes my decision was reversed. Weather a class is hard depends on many things and on the students. I had very hard quantum mechanics because they are, well, hard. I will not blame the teacher for that.

80 points by siva7 4y ago

lvl102 4y ago

NYU is not an elite institution. It’s a local school with mediocre students.

nicolas_t 4y ago
My only contact with NYU alumni was someone who had a master in ITP at NYU and was very proud of it. It's supposedly described as an art school for engineers and at the same time an engineering school for artists. I can't judge her art but I can definitely say resolutely that she was not an engineer nor did it bring enough engineering knowledge to talk to engineers in her role as a PM. The running gag among the team was that she would confidently say utter non-sense while making it sound technical. Enough to fool non-engineers but extremely funny to the actual engineers that worked with her.
- speed_spread 4y ago
  That's sad. Sounds like she didn't know that she didn't know.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  > It's supposedly described as an art school for engineers and at the same time an engineering school for artists. By detractors or publicity? Because as insults go that’s just brutal.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

This appears to be mostly reporting on this New York Times article https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/nyu-organic-chemistry-petition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/nyu-organic-chemistry-... so I think that should be considered the original source.

hikingsimulator 4y ago
I guess it was posted to avoid the paywall discussion that would arise from posting the NYT -- the FAQ discourages that.

tromp 4y ago

> According to The New York Times, 82 of Jones' 350 students signed the petition last spring; it alleged that too many of them were failing and that this was unacceptable. The students cited emotional and mental health complaints to make the case that Jones ought to make the class less difficult. > "We urge you to realize that a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students' learning and well-being a priority and reflects poorly on the chemistry department as well as the institution as a whole," the petition read. > The Times article suggests that throughout the pandemic, Jones made a number of accommodations for struggling students. He reduced the difficulty of his exams, but students were still failing them. > "Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate," said Jones. > The article does note that the petition never called for Jones to be fired. But the university evidently decided that the best way to resolve the situation was to turn him loose. > His departure is certainly a loss for NYU's academic caliber. After all, Jones is a lion in the field of organic chemistry, publishing 225 papers in his 40-year career. He literally wrote the textbook, "Organic Chemistry," which weighs in at 1,300 pages. It's sad that professors are strongly incentivized to lower difficulty and grade generously until a large majority of students pass, without having mastered the material the professor is supposed to be teaching them. No professor ever got fired for making things too easy or for imparting too little knowledge.

deliriumchn 4y ago
This is very sad to read to be honest. My prof. was an old school guy who was author for few very in-depth books about organic chemistry. He was very, very demanding and his class was very hard, our median scores were around 20-30% lower than in any other class, but in the end, I can def. say that after two years studying with that dude, it was my strongest subject, I could literally spit pages of text about anything in his exams in the end. It was very hard, but it was very worth it and very fun to actually understand whats going on inside large chemical reactors. Ofc, there are some teachers/professors that are making things too hard with no purpose (like robot-reading walls of text in a super speed mode and then demanding you to remember them on exam word by word), but some of them just have high standards and its a good thing
- 4y ago

wirthjason 4y ago

I’ve never taken organic chemistry but I always hated classes where the discussion after getting test results went like this: “Aw man, I got a 40.” “That’s great, most people got 20s, that’s the highest score”

gregshap 4y ago
I always loved the classes that had at least a couple of exams like that
sweettea 4y ago
Why? If a test is supposed to measure your mastery of material relative to others', and point out your areas of potential improvement, a test with a full range of scores from 0 to 100% seems most effective. A test with a range of 0-40 is, agreed, less effective; but still better than a range of 80-100: an overly hard test merely points out that everyone has room for improvement.
- nicolas_t 4y ago
  Exactly, a well designed hard test is great. Besides being a test, it's also a learning opportunity. By confronting your limits, you get to learn aspects of the material you didn't know. Past years tests like this are also great when studying the material (assuming that the teacher is decent and renews his tests every year)

civilized 4y ago

It's kind of interesting that libertarian Reason Magazine feels the need to comment on this. Isn't this just Capitalism Working Great, serving the student/parent-customers who are paying the bills? I know there's more nuance to this - you can disagree with what a firm does in a free market economy and assert it's bad for society. But it seems like, from a libertarian perspective, the focus should be on how this is bad for the university, and will reduce its signaling value to employers or something. Because if the customers want a diploma mill, and there's no self-interest downside to the university becoming a diploma mill, then in a libertarian worldview it's generally quite right and good that the university becomes a diploma mill.

jamesblonde 4y ago
That's what some of my students believe, but is wrong in socialized education countries. Here, the government are my paymasters. They pay me to train students to become engineers. And they set the bar. And students need to reach that bar. So, we are not in-hoc to the students. They are not consumers paying for a service. They are in a privileged position that they are receiving an education, an investment, and it is their responsibility to reach the desired standard. That said, we also have some (not that much) pressure to pass more students, as the university makes more money.
- civilized 4y ago
  That sounds really, really nice, genuinely. In the US though, I fear we would fail just as badly on this front with fully government-funded universities. We have pervasive cultural problems and I worry the government would institutionalize them rather than acting as a bulwark against them. In many localities, government-funded K-12 has the exact same problems exemplified by this orgo prof's firing, except the taxpayer is compelled to fund the dysfunction. The silver lining is the charter school movement, which at least sometimes allows families trapped in bad school systems to escape to a better culture, but even in the charter system there is a good amount of exploitation masquerading as education. I think the "enlightened" libertarian view might be needed here - if your university becomes a diploma mill, it ceases to be useful to employers. Eventually, students realize it no longer provides the signaling value it once did and go elsewhere. And gossiping about the failure of standards hopefully accelerates this process.

truth777 4y ago

civilized 4y ago
Personally if this happens I'm going to blame metaverse surgery training, not easy orgo classes.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Yeah but I can’t melodramatically soapbox about that

hwers 4y ago

Hey as a european where I doubt anything like this would ever happen maybe I should take the perspective on this as a good thing for me in the sense of a lot less future competition

spywaregorilla 4y ago
Should the US view it as a good thing that Europe's economy is crumbling under an energy crisis so less future competition for us? I think no.
- yonaguska 4y ago
  Unfortunately, our leaders(American) are very pleased at the prospect. https://youtu.be/GK3u8up_HLA https://youtu.be/GK3u8up_HLA
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Well it is what it is. Russia has doomed Europe to a long period of economic decline. The economic opportunity for the US is vast. This could be a period of economic power gains not seen since the end of WWII. To not recognize this would be foolish. It's not even accurate to paint it as "stealing" or "capitalizing" on Europe's weakness. They simply won't be able to produce things, and someone needs to, so it might as well be the US. Europe cannot be helped even if we wanted to.

propter_hoc 4y ago

I read the New York Times article on this yesterday and discussed it with my wife (neuroscientist). Our discussion went like this: Wife: "This is bonkers, the entire point of orgo is to cull the pre-med students. When I took orgo they showed the planned curve and explicitly said: one-third of you will fail." Me: "Yeah, we had classes like that in electrical engineering as well, it was understood that that was the point of the class. It is hard to avoid the implication that Gen Z is really spectacularly entitled." Wife: "It's the explosion effect. They have learned they should feel entitled to good things, like being treated well no matter their identity or background or whatever. But they also are entitled for other areas where entitlement is not justified." I thought that was a pretty insightful thought!

spywaregorilla 4y ago
Are you millennials? Because if so, welcome to the generation of older folks complaining about the younger folks.
- qeternity 4y ago
  I find this bizarre. Nearly all of the systemic issues faced by Millennials are because Boomers feel entitled to a house that appreciates massively, and retirement account that only goes in one direction, etc. Boomers have massive economic entitlement. Gen Z have massive social entitlement. And Millennials are caught somewhere in the middle not feeling entitled to either, but struggling nonetheless.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    The only difference between Boomers and Millennials is chronological. They both have the same sense of entitlement. They both have the same obsession with money. They both have the same persecution complex. And they love to blame each other for everything rather than face up to the fact that life isn't fair.
    - voisin 4y ago

anotherhue 4y ago

I see versions of this all the time. My suspicion is that we’ve take the ‘customer is always right’ concept too far out of business and into unrelated (notionally) fields. By definition these students take this course because they do not understand the subject, how can they then be qualified to determine how hard it should be? The article also implies some poor manners from the professor which is an entirely different issue.

sn41 4y ago
This is a wrong analogy, I feel. A student being a customer is not quite right. I think the analogy of a sports coach and a mentee is more appropriate. The purpose of the coach is to train the youngster to become competitive enough for the league. It's not to certify that "you are great, the game is rigged", just because the mentee pays the coach.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  > The purpose of the coach is to train the youngster to become competitive. And sometimes that’s not possible. If you’re 5 foot nothing you’re not making it to the NBA. Some people couldn’t pass organic chemistry with a decade to succeed at it. People are not equal in their capabilities.
  - voisin 4y ago
    > Some people couldn’t pass organic chemistry with a decade to succeed at it. These people should have never been allowed into the program if this course is that important. Filter better. The NBA raises the bar on anyone trying to get in that’s “5 foot nothing”.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      The NBA does not actually stop people playing basketball. It does not stop people putting in thousands of hours trying to get to their minimum bar. Organic Chemistry 1 is not trying to get into the NBA. It’s trying to get into a high school basketball team. Thousands of people do well enough at high school basketball to play university level. Most of them have no hope of playing professionally, anywhere. Organic Chemistry is only “that important” if you’re going to study chemistry, medicine or possibly biology. If you can’t pass it you’re not going to make it. Weeder courses exist to fail people who wouldn’t have made it sooner rather than later. You can do it at community colleges or open enrollment universities with no admissions standards like CUNY.

delaaxe 4y ago

So there are no bad teachers?

jonstewart 4y ago

84 year-old untenured professor’s annual contract not renewed…

etempleton 4y ago

Grade inflation is very much an issue right now at all levels of academia and this is the primary issue. Parents or students complain and leadership or the teacher capitulate. It was only exacerbated by the pandemic. Of course there is the chance this professor is unfairly hard or has lost his touch as a teacher, but this has always existed. Half my friends who took organic chemistry failed or barely passed it the first time. The mentality then was to study harder and try again.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
> It was only exacerbated by the pandemic No, it was exacerbated by ever increasing tution fees. You don't see this 'costumer' pressure on professors in fully funded public universities elsewhere in the world. You are being given the privelege of access to higher education. However if you suddenly have to fork multiple years worth of savings to access it, it is likely that your level of demands (even if not legitimate in this case) is increased.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Other issue is that there is just too many people with degrees. In past just passing meant that it was good enough filter. Now the GPA must also enter into picture, which drives demand for grade inflation lot higher. If this aspect didn't exist, I doubt grade inflation would either...
- etempleton 4y ago
  This issue also persisted in public school where students were passed along. That has nothing to do with tuition.
d0gbread 4y ago
Maybe the mindset has shifted but I'm unclear why that's a bad thing. The pass rate at my university was similar. If this has been constant (that so many people have to fail and retake) why does the curriculum stay the same? The goal is to learn the material. If you're training for a marathon you don't sign up for a marathon, fail, then sign up for another. You slow down and work up to it in successful chunks. Organic chem seems like the defacto class that people struggle with, but the same was true at my institution for physics and other classes. Maybe instead we should be looking at a different or longer track for that material, or even earlier education that is producing students that might not have the math and science foundation out of high school?

johnkpaul 4y ago

I have an NYU chemistry degree and I took quite a lot of organic. I wasn’t pre-med and had planned, at the time, to get a PhD with research in organic chemistry/material science. Even though my classes were with this guy’s predecessor’s predecessor, everything described about the challenge of this class and the complaints from premeds was exactly the same ~20 years ago. Organic Chemistry 1, 2 and 3 at NYU have always been considered challenging and “weed out”. I was and am very proud of my moderately successful academics in chemistry from NYU and find it a bit sad that the expectations given to me are changing.

Ekaros 4y ago
When I start to think about. Organic chemistry is in subset of courses that actually train people for their work, that is being in chemistry. So everyone should expect certain level of competence from those passing the course. Now to use it for filtering med-school students seems the broken aspect.
shbooms 4y ago
> Organic Chemistry 1, 2 and 3 at NYU have always been considered challenging and “weed out”. It seems this "weed out" culture around orgo is very much an established thing in the world of the sciences/pre-med which is a little strange to someone like me that is not in that world. How come one particular subject is used so universally to weed people out as opposed to just weeding out the bottom x% of people with lowest overall GPA's? Is orgo so much more important to scientists and medical professional compared to other subjects such as biology, anatomy, etc?
- johnkpaul 4y ago
  It’s “weed out” from the perspective of medical schools, not chemistry path people. It is a challenging subject for many, but the people who aren’t premed have an inherent interest to work through the material, imho. I think that if the MCAT removed all organic chemistry, organic would lose all the “weed out” categorization

ldoughty 4y ago

I don't teach chemistry... And I certainly don't have a bag sitter (I hope) towards students... But I still sympathize with the professor... You get 16 weeks or so to teach students a topic... Some topics are MUCH harder than others (learn Microsoft office suite, vs get the Linux+ certification). I think schools need to do a better job splitting difficult courses, but I think there's a fundamental dislike of course series, since that raises costs to get an education, and in more specialized areas, it would be hard to get enough students to take the second course if people only need or take part 1.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

Reminds me of this one teacher we had, he was teaching err. Database abstractions and data modeling and the like. I don't think he was a very good teacher, very uptight and "just so" and whatnot, kind of old fashioned. I heard through the grapevine that he was actually fired at some point, citing incompetence. He sued, basically saying "prove it"; the school couldn't and had to hire him back. I mean I didn't like the class but it was just the one, it was manageable enough.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago

Students are paying to get a diploma, not to learn something. Customer must be always satisfied, that's the reason why private universities are destined to produce useless and unskilled absolvents.

diceduckmonk 4y ago

Lots of mention of the word orgo here but the terminology may not be colloquial everywhere. Before college, I hung out on the premed forums and then told my peers about “orgo”. They were confused and corrected me that I meant “ochem”.

kwhitefoot 4y ago
When writing for a general audience we should all avoid local or subject related slang.
dekhn 4y ago
both terms are widely used. sneakers and tennis shoes, soda and pop.

rabite 4y ago

I remember when I wanted to be a mechanical engineer. After a statics and dynamics class, I realized I was just not mentally fit for the job, and decided to be in the Internet advertising industry instead. Stupid me, the right answer was to sue and demand a degree in something I couldn't have managed to perform at. These younguns are geniuses.

ojr 4y ago

His book is 1300 pages and $200, an example of an unaffordable college book that will cause some students who can’t afford $200 books in the beginning of the semester to fall behind. The system only wants student who can afford expensive textbooks unlike a public highschool where the textbooks are free. I’m an idiot in higher level academia standards . I’m a Senior Software Engineer in real life though.

dekhn 4y ago
The $xxx I spent on my expensive science books in college have paid for themselves many times over. Not just in job opportunities- the chance to see summarized, organized information that represents the state of the art in 10+K of human years of knowledge gathering.

nemo44x 4y ago

This is what equity is. The gradual decay of elite institutions into mediocrity. NYU and others aren’t actually a signifier that you were among the brightest of your cohort but rather just a brand now. The end result is our brightest and cheated and our entire nation suffers for it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dendriti 4y ago
Any university should be able to hire and fire teaching professors at will if they're not doing a satisfactory job. Clearly this professor wasn't. I don't feel like anyone was cheated.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  I didn't say they can't. But they are not a respectable university any longer nor are they considered elite. You have to assume that affirmative action has thinned the talent at the university to the point the student body can no longer get through the rigor that separated the smart kids from the elite kids. Because the university is graded on the quality of student and the quality of student continues to decline, these once elite universities are fading.
  - trs8080 4y ago
    Ah yes, this is the minorities' fault. > You have to assume that affirmative action has thinned the talent at the university to the point the student body can no longer get through the rigor that separated the smart kids from the elite kids Oh, do you? So affirmative action has pushed out the elite whites and now mediocrity reigns?
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      > Oh, do you? So affirmative action has pushed out the elite whites and now mediocrity reigns? It's actually pushed out mainly elite Asians. Just look at acceptance rates and the scores required to get in based on race and sex. Asians of both sexes have to far surpass everyone else and white males in particular have to as well. Because of this, the student body is made up of more and more people that may be quite smart, but are not elite. They don't belong in these institutions and the institutions can no longer be considered elite because their student body no longer is. The evidence is things like this story. The student body has weakened in intellectual ability enough to the point that this institution felt compelled to lower their standard, which also means American universities have lost some standing globally. I can only expect that the students coming from these institutions are not at the level they used to be.

ankaAr 4y ago

I'm not seeing how is the failing rate on his course. Only that near 30% of the students signed the letter. It is maybe that number?. 30% failing rate is not bad, yes, the education community must to do something about those students concerns (maybe opening a pre orgo course or offer some tutors), but if that is the failing rate is not bad. What I'm saying is that when you are teaching the failing rate is something you must to lower, not lowering the quality of your course, but being flexible with your teaching system. I'm not seeing why you should remove the teacher here. And that is bad.

viraptor 4y ago

There are comments jumping to conclusions, but the article is so thin about the details, that maybe we should step back a little. We don't know what the whole complaint contained. We know there were other issues ("and multiple student complaints about his dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension, and opacity about grading"). Maybe it was only about the pass ratio. Or maybe he was a terrible teacher. They show his academic success as something to consider, even though it means nothing about the teaching abilities. I've had a bad teacher at uni at one of the "hard/filter" courses. Many people failed. But I'm sure some of them did because the teacher was a dick to them.

kwhitefoot 4y ago
He's been teaching there since 2007. Has he been a bad teacher all that time or is it simply that the students this year are especially poor at organic chemistry (or academic work of any kind)?
- viraptor 4y ago
  Yes, that's exactly the kind of context we should know before having an opinion about him or the petitioning students.

subroutine 4y ago

This article is so upsetting. The worst students among a cohort of underperforming zoomers (as compared to historical cohorts) were offered a free redo (retroactive withdrawal) of the course without consequence. And that wasn't good enough, so they pressed until the uni fired this prof (who had previously won teaching awards). I'm sure they celebrated their great victory and validation, by further slagging this prof on tiktok. Where is my cane...

carrychains 4y ago
The students were not petitioning to have him fired and were reportedly surprised with that outcome. The petition also seems to have circulated before the redo offer. This is on the uni.

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

Isn't this the logic of affirmative action extended to encompass a greater number of categories and cases? If the premise is that we require doctors to meet certain criteria (putting to one side the soundness of the criteria or the means by which students are assessed in relation to those criteria), then it doesn't matter why someone fails to meet those criteria, only that they do. This would be because we prioritize the good of the patient over professional ambitions. However, to soften standards would mean prioritizing professional ambitions (or actually, the desire for social status) over the good of the patient. That seems to correspond with the culture of radical individualism (emphasis on radical; respect for the individuality of others wanes with increasing egocentrism) and obsession with status that we are often accused of having today.

dang 4y ago

Related: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33070843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33070843 - Oct 2022 (83 comments)

madmax96 4y ago

There is a funny notion that professors work for students. They don't. They hardly even work for the university. It is more correct to say that they are affiliated with the university. At top universities, professors bring in grant money or else they lose their job. The university takes a portion of the grant before any of the money is spent. Then, the professor pays the university from the remaining money for their graduate student's tuition and stipend, to use university technology, and rent for research space. Next, the university only pays professors for 9 months out of the year. So, another chunk of grant money finances the professor's salary for the remaining 3 months. Top universities scrape billions off research grants annually. These grants are won by faculty members. They dwarf salaries. Faculty members bring in more cash to the university than their salaries are worth. In reality, professors finance the university. Students are mistaken if they think they are their professor's employer.

rahimnathwani 4y ago
This guy was an adjunct.

foxyv 4y ago

I wish colleges wouldn't hate on failing a class so much. Failing a class is an excellent learning experience allowing students to realize the extent of their knowledge and ability. Failure forces reassessment of priorities. Instead, colleges make it a black mark against a student to be avoided at all costs. I mean, how hard is it for these students to just take the class again with their added knowledge? Why not just overwrite the previous grade with the new one? Why do they run these classes in series so that anyone who fails pretty much loses an entire year? Why is it such a huge deal that they had to fire a teacher over it? It's not like colleges aren't getting enough money. Especially NYU! Acadamia is so gung-ho about research and papers but so freaking lazy about teaching. Just look at what they pay TAs and associate professors!

throwaway2016a 4y ago
In most colleges your grade on your transcript will get overwritten by the new grade if you take the class again. And your GPA will be adjusted accordingly. Don't forget that NYU credits (if the Google results I found are accurate) are $2,020 and Chemistry is usually a 4 credit class. You don't get refunds for failed classes so that is a $8,000 loss. And it might delay graduation. It has real consequences. But it also sounds like the professor was bad at writing exam questions. He was failing people at a statistically improbable rate. I used to teach at a university and we generally aimed for a bell curve. And if too many people were on the A side of the bell curve the odds are your class was too easy and if too many people were on the F side it was too hard. Either way when taken as the statistical aggregate it is usually the professor's fault not the student's.
- foxyv 4y ago
  I had a lot of professors that seemed to hate students and take pride in making them fail horribly. They took pride that their bell curves were way to the left. I learned the least in those classes because they were designed to not teach anything. Sometimes classes are too easy because they teach really well. I had an astrophysics professor who spent a lot of time learning how to teach subjects. His classes seemed remarkably easy, yet we covered WAY more material than the 30% mean bell curve ones. He was just REALLY good at presenting the material and cementing knowledge using interactive learning and other really cool teaching methods.

BrandoElFollito 4y ago

I was a student, and then an academic teacher in Europe in the late 90's. I mention Europe because the students were not any kind of "customers", but just plain students. I had classes where the teacher was a pain in the ass, at the middle or top of the medieval structure which was academia (this is one of the reasons I left). Their classes were very hard to show how brilliant they were. Usually the courses were crap. As a young teacher, I had all the more complicated graduates. By that I mean ones where physics was just a compulsory step but they build not care less. I was quite lax: if they learned the basic stuff, they passed. The better ones, who cared about the grade and made efforts had very good marks. And then there were the ones who did not even open the book and expected to pass because I wild not fail too many people. I did, had discussions with the dean, sometimes my decision was reversed. Weather a class is hard depends on many things and on the students. I had very hard quantum mechanics because they are, well, hard. I will not blame the teacher for that.