Professor fired for being too tough (high school, scholarship, doctors, paying)

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Sunbiz1

The average IQ has been dropping 5 points per generation, that's significant.
Without access to the full article, I'll assume students are not learning and/or retaining the terminology needed for organic chemistry; which I struggled with...yet scored a 32 ACT in natural sciences. As mentioned previously, it's not an easy subject; even for those with aptitude.

Students today face a lot of distractions, in a world whose future is more uncertain than pre-2000.
Was he fired for being too difficult?, probably not; as I don't see a tenured professor intentionally increasing the difficulty of an already challenging subject matter.

OK. IQ averages have been dropping across many European countries for a number of years (including Norway, Denmark and France IIRC). Last I read that trend has not hit The US. We'll see going forward what impact Covid yields.

[jtab4994]

Originally Posted by EDS_

OK. IQ averages have been dropping across many European countries for a number of years (including Norway, Denmark and France IIRC). Last I read that trend has not hit The US. We'll see going forward what impact Covid yields.

Immigration? I don't mean genetics. But most illegals are uneducated, and unless they successfully integrate or aspire to integrate into the new country's culture, the kids will remain unsuccessful. In today's world fewer immigrants join the "melting pot" that older generations took advantage of for their children.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by EDS_

Sorry, I wasn't trying to throw you under the bus.........just curious. Undergrad Inorganic Chem I, O-Chem I & II plus an upper division bio-chemistry class are common prerequisites for US allopathic medical schools.

Yes, that was the situation. So he didn't flunk out of med school, he just didn't qualify to submit an application. I'm glad he eventually got to realize his dream, though. Where there's a will, there's a way.

[blisterpeanuts]

Originally Posted by Cida

There are so many disturbing aspects to this, but it caught my attention that the students objected to the professor seeming condescending and demanding. This sounds to me like kids who've been incessantly praised and coddled all their lives and are destined to be jolted by the working world.

At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?
Maitland Jones Jr., a respected professor, defended his standards. But students started a petition, and the university dismissed him.
“Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,” he wrote in a grievance to the university, protesting his termination. Grades fell even as he reduced the difficulty of his exams. The problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, he said. “In the last two years, they fell off a cliff,” he wrote. “We now see single digit scores and even zeros." After several years of Covid learning loss, the students not only didn’t study, they didn’t seem to know how to study, Dr. Jones said.
And, they said, he had a “condescending and demanding” tone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/u...-petition.html

Organic chemistry is brutal. I took it twice, about 17 years ago, dropped the class because I was barely passing, took it again in summer school and did okay but not great.

It's about electron orbitals and molecular bonding. It's not like a gender studies course where everything's just feel-good nonsense. You either learn it, or you fail; there's no in-between.

This professor is accomplished and has published several books in the field, and the students were using his textbook. Did they switch to another textbook when he was fired? It's remarkable that Jones had not earned tenure in his 15 years at NYU, but instead was on a contract that had to be renewed each year. Maybe he should have sought a tenure track role elsewhere, though those have become difficult to obtain.

This petition should be published on the web somewhere, so that someone can create an app to help people avoid this kind of doctor, assuming that any of them have what it takes to become a doctor which I doubt.

NYU is a very woke, left wing university. An example of a book published by NYU Press. A "night of protest" at NYU when the Republican club invited a conservative speaker. I recall a video of NYU students trashing a conservative student club's table and just getting away with it, but I can't find it now. Unfortunately, NYU is rather representative of modern day universities in the U.S., with sinking standards, woke students and faculty, cowardly administrators, dominated by closed minded far-left ideologues.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Sunbiz1

The average IQ has been dropping 5 points per generation, that's significant.
Without access to the full article, I'll assume students are not learning and/or retaining the terminology needed for organic chemistry; which I struggled with...yet scored a 32 ACT in natural sciences. As mentioned previously, it's not an easy subject; even for those with aptitude.

Students today face a lot of distractions, in a world whose future is more uncertain than pre-2000.
Was he fired for being too difficult?, probably not; as I don't see a tenured professor intentionally increasing the difficulty of an already challenging subject matter.

I think part of the problem was, that students everywhere (nationwide), in both high school and college, have had a hard time taking the sudden switch to online courses seriously. Some. have had trouble being motivated, without the in-class participation part of it. This is a shame, since the instructors generally put a lot of effort into making the videos. It was a lot more work for them, that they weren't getting paid for. For those students, everything unravelled along with their motivation to study--their study skills along with that, according to one of the comments by the prof. But it also sounded like some of the problem preceded Covid.

Maybe it's partly as you say--too many distractions. Phones in the classroom, phones providing a distraction even when students are hanging out with friends or having dinner with their family.

[tnff]

I wish there was more information to go by. While it's easy to just fire one of the "current generation ....." grenades, I've seen too many professors who really didn't belong in the job.

I understand the purpose of weed out classes and just how tough they can be. Some professors are tough, but teach you things (thanks Dr G; best professor I ever had) you need for the courses that are coming. Others can be tough on you but teach nothing.

Like Dr B. His class was stupidly hard. Not just because of the material, but his teaching methods were just random, disjoint, and unrelated discussions, combined with missing classes, and even giving out an exam to the wrong class and then failing his class because they didn't take the exam. Wish I could say it was Alzheimer's or dementia or something because that would at least explain his behavior. But nope, he really did that. Skipped his class period and then showed up at the very end when Dr S's class was starting in the same room and tried to preempt Dr S to give out the exam. Led to some loud words between them in the hall. Dr B took up the tests and then failed everyone in his class who hadn't been in the Dr S's class to get the exam. This went to the dean, including the hallway argument between them but the Dean's response was that "Dr B has tenure so we can't do anything." In the end I passed, but I knew less when I finished the class than before I took it.

Just there isn't enough information here to know if this is a Dr G with poor students or a Dr B with good ones.

[sheerbliss]

Originally Posted by tnff

I wish there was more information to go by. While it's easy to just fire one of the "current generation ....." grenades, I've seen too many professors who really didn't belong in the job.

Agreed. People tend to assume that students want professors who'll let them slack off, but students know that subsequent math or science courses are going to be a lot harder if they don't know the material those courses are built on. Even if the school let them slack off through every course, there's still the matter of passing exams like the MCAT. My experience in college was that students wanted to learn the material and much preferred a tough instructor to a confusing one who gave out points just to avoid failing the whole class.

Without knowing the people involved, though, it's hard to say whether these students' study skills had gone downhill over the past few years, or if it was time for the professor to retire.

[TMSRetired]

Well that sure sets a precedent

[Toxic Waltz]

Perhaps the quality of the students enrolling in his class has diminished over the years and the excuses the preceding generations are making for their regression are part of the reason why.

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by sheerbliss

Agreed. People tend to assume that students want professors who'll let them slack off, but students know that subsequent math or science courses are going to be a lot harder if they don't know the material those courses are built on. Even if the school let them slack off through every course, there's still the matter of passing exams like the MCAT. My experience in college was that students wanted to learn the material and much preferred a tough instructor to a confusing one who gave out points just to avoid failing the whole class.

Without knowing the people involved, though, it's hard to say whether these students' study skills had gone downhill over the past few years, or if it was time for the professor to retire.

Actually no, students generally don't want "hard" professors in any discipline. I will say, from my perspective as a high school teacher, that going to the "customer service" model has made things worse.

When educational theorists start saying, and school systems adopt, the "don't have to memorize because you can just look it up on your phone" teaching model bad things will ensue. Something that various posters in this Forum have advocated over the years. When you get a group of AP students who can't add a short column of two digit numbers without a calculator (or even one digit numbers) you know things have deteriorated.

I was in college fifty years ago now and there was an underground telegraph about who was an "easy" instructor and who wasn't back then.

Now I will say that I taught with people who had entire classes fail, mostly Algebra I and II and Science classes, even Earth Science. In that case then yes, you do have to look at the instructor. As a sidebar to that, though, you do have Administrators pressuring teachers to pass everyone ("What will you do to ensure that no one fails your class even if they don't do the work or pass the tests?").