This is probably because the data were collected in 2017 but they were cumulative (i.e. not just for the year of 2017).
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Lots of evidence? You must have seen more than I did. Complaints about classes during Covid were common everywhere, not specific to this class.
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I didn’t “like it” or dislike it. But I did read it. It is not what you claim it is.
From the NYU Editorial:
Students of Jones’ fall 2020 class wrote an 11-page documentoutlining their grievances with his handling of the course — not the course content.
It is an outline of issues raised by various Fall 2020 students, during the worst of the Covid disruptions, and according to the students this professor was totally inept at dealing with the challenges.
The editorial discusses a self-serving letter the professor sent the students after his contract wasn’t renewed. The admonished the students:
“It is very difficult to be self critical . . . It is hard to accept personal responsibility when we meet failure, as each of us will at some point, but it is an essential life skill you would be wise to develop.”
It seems this professor was unable to heed his own advice.
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Hmm, complaining about professor’s lack of empathy of the stressful times, declaring students shouldn’t have to cut back on time for friends, family or self for this course, whining that his joke to the class that “you’re too young to be tired” was inappropriate. Some of these students need a therpist, not a professor
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Wow. I cannot see the initial page of the document, didn’t see a date, but what I did read of it was so overwhelmingly every-possible-excuse-in-the-book, that in fact some of its complaints were contradictory! Lectures get posted on Fridays, so that interferes with weekend leisure time??? Uh, anyone who feels as if a lecture being posted on Friday is a violation of their sacred weekend leisure time most definitely does NOT belong in medicine.
This document reminds me of the opinion piece in the Harvard newspaper in which a young woman of color complained that racism had forced her off the pre-med path. How? She had been upset about Breonna Taylor, and this is why she’d done poorly in organic. Never mind that the material is extremely challenging, that many very bright and capable students work as hard as they can in the class and still get a C, and those who aren’t capable, or who don’t work extremely hard at it, get D’s and F’s or withdraw, that for generations Organic Chem is where pre-med aspirations go to die. Nope, couldn’t have been that. It was RACISM!
My organic prof, who was a fantastic teacher with 5-star reviews, started the course by saying, “Everything you have ever heard about this class is true.” I think I got maybe a C one semester and a B minus the other semester. I never really could visualize the reactions 3-D, I just did my best to learn it by rote. I was so depressed during the course that I even went to student health counseling, to talk about the fact that suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about my high school friend who had committed suicide after high school. It’s a miserable, tough class. I still got a very high chem score on the MCAT, so high that one interviewer thought I’d somehow managed to cheat on the MCAT, so clearly, I must have done something, but it was most definitely NOT a pleasant experience, and not because of the excellent prof. The material is just very, very challenging for most students.
Sounds to me as if NYU did make a mistake here, in ending its relationship with a prof with a proven record of excellence, because some students organized a petition using every possible excuse in the book. The illustrious prof is at the point in his life when, unless it’s a pleasure to teach, he most certainly doesn’t have to, but I think that NYU has made a mistake, and set an awful precedent. Now that it’s been made so public, it sure doesn’t reflect well on NYU.
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@skieurope, I see that today you went back and added me to one of your posts from yesterday afternoon. Setting issues raised by the timing of your long after-the-fact edit, I stand by my assessment.
While I’ve come to expect that certain posters often express derogatory opinions about students (“lazy” ill prepared, whiny, etc.) it is troublesome that a moderator would refer to “a high percentage” of lower-level students at NYU (or at any school) as “entitled snowflakes.” To my mind, it makes no difference whether you are referring to them generally or specifically, it is still insulting, demeaning, unwelcoming, and derogatory and should have no place here.
Likewise regarding your comments about how students who raise legitimate issues about the quality of the professor “probably should not be in the pre-med path” and about how you are “getting really tired of these Covid excuses,” even apparently from the students who had their lives totally disrupted by Covid.
This is supposed to be a supportive, inclusive environment, is it not? Hard to understand how your proximity in age to these students or your position as moderator gives you license to refer to “a high percentage” of these students in such a derogatory fashion. Perhaps @CC_Jon should get involved to address these concerns?
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Med school bound? Got a D or C in org chem class? Retake it. Go to a community college if you want to pay less per credit. Class size will be smaller, too, and most likely there will be no TAs who can barely speak English. Our local (and quite selective) med school used to consider higher grades from a retake.
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I zoned out when they complained about not receiving partial credit for multiple choice questions.
In my mind, the situation is a classic example of the XY Problem. Perhaps there were issues with the quality of teaching and/or course structure and/or a myriad of other concerns. However,the petition (and somebody needs to look up the definition of “petition”) does little, if anything, to address the root problem.
I’m also wondering about the reason / timing of the NYT story; Jones was informed 2 months ago that his contract wasn’t being renewed. So why is this a news story this week?
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The comments in the outline refer to the Fall 2020 semester. If there ever was a semester where kids faced unprecedented challenges, that was it.
They didn’t claim it was a petition. The editorial from where @roycroftmom obtained it refers to hit as
“an 11-page document outlining their grievances with his handling of the course — not the course content.”
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As we learn more and more about what happens it looks like cheating was one of the main problems.
A former student posted emails from the prof on reddit where he was rude and condescending. He basically called out the student(s) for either not reading the question or having close to zero O Chem knowledge. The emails were deleted but here is the thread: Reddit - Dive into anything
I think this post sums it up:
For those who know organic chemistry, he is clearly very frustrated by what he perceives is a complete lack of effort. However, what is actually going on here is that a large number of students are cheating. At least half the class is not putting in effort and cheating based on the “wrong molecule” and “unstabilized cation” comments. Without more detail it is hard to know exactly what students are doing, but it appears he has modified his quiz questions from prior years and students are using chegg/Greek files of answers. He is frustrated because students aren’t putting in effort and are also answering questions in a completely baffling manner - in a majors course. …
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Acknowledging the reality that not all students have the intellectual ability or motivation to work hard is not unwelcoming, merely an expression of the truth. I would hope this forum would continue to operate in the real world enough to accept that.
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356 students from NYU applied to med school in 2021 https://www.aamc.org/media/9636/download?attachment
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This seems to be highly relevant to this discussion, and at least as relevant as the NYT article.
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Washington Square News writing an opinion piece does not equate with a NY Times article. You realize WSN staff are NYU students, don’t you?
ETA from the article
“No professor should apologize to students who did well for not creating a curriculum where they would struggle. That is not the mark of a teacher.”
He’s apologizing to the students who try, put in the effort, come to class and learn the material. Because they are the ones hurt by this.
Is an example of this self-serving article
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Yes, I do. And the Ed Board points out specific flaws in the “reporting” by NYT. Seems to me that’s relevant to the discussion, especially from the student perspective.
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I agree. I wonder why @roycroftmom didn’t link it when they posted and mischaracterized the 2020 outline linked in the article as the 2022 petition?
Anyway, I think the conclusion is spot on:
The New York Times has a responsibility to report news accurately and objectively, and this article should not have met its high standards for publication. It needlessly threw the integrity of Jones’ students, and others at NYU, into question. Instead, it served as a puff piece for Jones to air out his personal frustrations, while failing to answer any of the questions it posed.
Posters here too are misrepresenting the record (for example repeatedly and falsely claiming the 2020 issues outline is the 2022 “petition”) and baselessly slamming the integrity and abilities of the NYU students while laughing and scoffing at their concerns. It it extremely disturbing to see the distain that many posters (and at least one moderator) on this website have for actual college students."
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Using the NYU first destination report, of the approximately 5700 students in the class of 2020, just under 5% went to medical school. From the 356 applicants, that would mean about 285 attended, or a success rate of almost 80%-consistent with those getting grades of A or B in organic chemistry.
Frankly, the editorial by the NYU student paper was so poorly written I find it embarrassing. So does my student journalist. There are lots of examples of good student journalism-Columbia, Harvard, at Princeton the editor just won a Pulitzer. Maybe they need more journalism courses at NYU.
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Is that why you misrepresented the 2020 issues outline as the 2022 petition?
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No, @mtmind, I misread it, and had trouble linking to the entire article-I expect you did too, which is why several hours elapsed before it was posted by another after I provided the name of the student paper in which it appears.