A classic example of there being more to the story. For the more complete picture, users can read the whole thread.
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I believe that post will actually give people even more insight into my overall STEM abilities so thanks for linking that.
And remember everyone, I didn’t make it further than that one data science class. I had managers tell me that I sucked at programming.
As someone who was told on CC that I was terrible at organic chemistry, I believe that teaching does make a difference. I understood Orgo 2 way better than Orgo 1 when I was taught be a professor who didn’t just use PowerPoints and drew out the mechs in class.
That being said, I don’t want to be shamed by the boomers on CC, so I will say that students are responsible for their learning as well and shouldn’t blame others for their poor performance.
So it’s probably a mix of both bad teaching and students not busting their butts hard enough. But I’ll probably have someone tell me nO iT’s tHe sTuDeNTs’ fAuLt oNly blah blah blah you’re just salty because you only got a B- boohoohoo you shouldn’t be a doctor; I wouldn’t want a doctor who only earned a B in orgo to treat me
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Also, I personally am reviewing organic chemistry starting from scratch again, by myself and a textbook, because I know I have a poor foundation in the subject and that it’s my fault for not being resourceful enough during undergrad to learn it well.
So, I understand personal responsibility very well.
I hope you take the necessary courses and get to med school if that is your dream. You seem to have the right attitude
Lol thanks! You’re a lot nicer than some people here who told me I sucked at biology because I only earned a B- in Orgo 1 (I didn’t take any bio classes apart from physiology, which I got an A in).
You seem highly motivated and willing to do the required work; that is a big part of it. Good luck.
As is explained in the NYTimes newsletter, contingent faculty have very little job security, and it is not uncommon for schools to heavily weigh course evaluations when deciding whether or not to renew their contracts.
Jones taught organic chemistry as a contingent (or adjunct) faculty member . . . they do not get the protections of tenure . . . contingent faculty members are low paid and low status [and are] very vulnerable. . . administrators rely more heavily on student evaluations than they do peer evaluations. Even if the administrators do not weigh student evaluations in judging professors’ performance, it is easy to see how contingent faculty members could construe them as a kind of up-or-down vote . . . Student satisfaction is an easy metric for the university to use to measure success, if only because, by definition, it means professors are not causing bureaucratic headaches for higher-ups.
The article also points out that because of his vaunted status, NYU seems to have put up with a lot more from him they it likely would have other contingent faculty. (I referred to this above as a sort of “de facto tenure”, while this author compared it to him being like a celebrated musician teaching one course.) The school eventually had enough, and with no obligation to resign him, they opted not to. As the same piece put it:
That he could ignore his student evaluations to that effect for as long as he did says that he had a lot of privilege to do so.
Seems like both may have been. But part of the reason the students were incompetent was because the professor was incompetent at reaching these students, and not vice versa. That’s likely one of the reasons they didn’t bring him back.
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I have never taught undergraduates but taught MBA students at the beginning of my career. I left full time academia but still usually teach executive education one week a year at my old haunt. In addition, my firm does some executive training. In days of yore, one could ask executives to a) do significant advance prep for a training; and b) read 15 page Harvard Business School cases. In the current generation, my team tells me that a younger audience will typically not read HBS cases and generally will not prepare in the same way for the courses and complain about the nature of the work. We have made significant changes in our pedagogical approach. E.g., we have created video cases to show laying out the facts prior to beginning our case discussions. I think the trend is that at least a significant percentage of today’s college students will not do well at old school assignments.
I know people who loved Maitland Jones as a professor and loved his Organic Chemistry course. But, it is plausible that a meaningful fraction of his students will only respond to different kinds of input and different kinds of assignments AND that Prof Jones hasn’t adjusted that much in terms of the nature of the assignments. No idea, but those two things together would produce the observed result.
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Some kids coming in well prepared and others not has been true in all of my education life, from K-college. Teaching at the high school, I honestly don’t see much difference over the years either.
Good/bad educators have been out there my entire educational life too.
Knowing more about educational learning styles (this is newer, but not “new”) has been super beneficial to good educators. It can help more kids learn and learn well. There are some who refuse to change their styles for anyone and are proud of it. I’m not convinced that’s a good thing TBH.
As we learn more about humans, it seems we should adapt taking into consideration what we’ve learned.
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I can certainly see how some students can be entitled. I can also see how old
Professors can be hard to understand (I am hearing complaints from one of my kids that sound legit) or how old professors can still teach well (I’ve heard of examples from my kids).
What I find interesting is if we evaluated every professor on student evaluation, and fired a teacher on reaching a certain threshold of complaints, either in school or college, without union or tenure protections, the education system would be in a very interesting state.
The education industry enjoys far too many protections relative to other industries.
I don’t care about kids who don’t study — that is their problem. They will see the effects of it soon after they graduate in terms of not progressing further in life. Especially at a place like NYU where the education cost them 320k — it is their loss if they haven’t used the resources wisely. It isn’t as if the D students were suddenly going to become A students if it were a different teacher. And I am not concerned that they were going to get into medical school and treating me, because they are not getting into medical school.
By the way, in order to be authentic, student reviews should be done before the final exam, and mandatory. At my son’s school, you can’t see your final grades without submitting a class /professor review.
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Some of those who support the firing of the professor often refer to the professor’s age. Unlike racism or sexism, ageism doesn’t seem to arouse the same passion or even matters to them.
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College teaching is one of the professions that can be done well at advanced ages-it is not physically demanding, hours are few and flexible, it is not stressful. Many schools have professors eager to teach long past standard retirement age.
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As a counter example, my son complained that his Lin Alg prof (who is 72) wears a mask, doesn’t use a mic, and mumbles under his breath, and cannot be heard from the front row. And constantly gets problems wrong when he is solving them on the black board. I can imagine that this is age related infirmities. My other son had an 89 year old math teacher that is well regarded by all his students. So age can be a factor. Of course it need not be a factor. We need to look at this case by case. I don’t think the student complaints are determinative though. The department has to take the student complaints, and then independently assess.
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Agreed. That is why it is so puzzling that NYU doesn’t appear to have handled it that way, or at least hasn’t said that it did so
I’m not moderating this thread because I’m participating, but just a gentle nudge not to stray into ageism in politics.
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That’s the crux of why we are going around in circles. HR/admin at NYU is not going to disclose the details of not renewing the contract, nor should they. We are all just speculating. Some give more of the benefit of the doubt to the students/admins, others to the professors.
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Sadly, this is not always the case. Most of the times you are correct though.
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College teaching takes more preparation to do well. It teaches highly sophisticated concepts developed over hundreds of years. It takes well organized approach to deliver. I don’t know about others but for me, I notice my organization skills are deteriorating with age.
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True, but having done the same lectures for 50 years likely makes those organizational skills less necessary. Of course, some are saying that giving the same lecture to 20k undergrads in the past is not sufficient for this year’s batch of sophomores.