Again, he’s taught the same course for decades so his students, until recently, must have been successfully “learning” in and “passing” his course.
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Then those students probably should not be in the pre-med path. And presumably, this class if 399 students has several TA’s. I wonder how many if these students availed themselves to TA office hours, setting up study groups, or avenues other than expecting to learn through osmosis during lecture.
I’m getting really tired of these Covid excuses. Yes, many are legitimate and need to be considered, but too many people are milking this for all it’s worth. So if all these students need to be held by the hand at 19, then they are in for a world of hurt in later years. I hope none are ever my doctor.
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I disagree that pre-med majors ought to be able to learn Organic Chem without a competent professor.
And whether or not you and others are “really tired of Covid excuses,” students (particularly last year’s sophomores) are coming to these campuses with wildly varied levels preparation. IMO, the schools and professors that don’t try to figure out a way to effectively help them learn are letting them down.
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When three-quarters of the class is doing fine, the problem is not the professor. Students have always had widely disparate levels of preparation ( and ability and motivation) for class. Those at the bottom of the curve will have to work harder to catch up ( and may not always be able or want to do so.). We are not all cut out to be doctors. That is ok, and does not mean that it is someone else’s fault if I can’t become a doctor.
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We don’t know that three-quarters were “doing fine.” All we know is that one quarter signed a petition; not calling for him to be fired, but for the school to address the problems with his teaching. And by the school’s account, he was far from “fine” as a professor.
From the article:
Dr. Jones’s performance, he wrote, “did not rise to the standards we require from our teaching faculty.”
Dr. Gabadadze declined to be interviewed. But Mr. Beckman defended the decision, saying that Dr. Jones had been the target of multiple student complaints about his “dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension and opacity about grading.”
Dr. Jones’s course evaluations, he added, “were by far the worst, not only among members of the chemistry department, but among all the university’s undergraduate science courses.”
This is a long-ago-retired professor employed on a year-to-year contract basis. How horrible do the reviews have to be before they can get rid of him?
It is odd to me the posters who are so quick to hold kids to the highest standards are equally unwilling to even consider the possibility that a long retired professor might no longer be the most effective teacher.
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The make-it-or-break-it course in the life sciences is organic chem.
For chemistry/chem. engineering, it’s physical chem (PChem)
For physics it’s thermo.
I contend that if you cannot handle your area’s make-it-or-break-it course, maybe you will not be a very good physician, engineer, physicist, chemist, etc.
When I face surgery, I would like the surgeon who could pass courses without the benefit of a petition. When I drive across a bridge, I would like it to have been designed by a competent engineer.
In the sciences, when mistakes are made people can get hurt, and worse. If the math says a bridge will collapse, it will collapse, no matter how you “feel” about it. In the sciences, there are right and wrong answers.
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I’m certainly not suggesting that kids who don’t master the material should be passed. I’m suggesting that they should be provided competent instruction Students have every right to complain if they aren’t provided competent instruction.
All the more reason for the universities and students to insist that their professors remain competent.
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This. We don’t know anything about the 3/4ths who didn’t sign the petition. Perhaps they were happy with a D. Perhaps they used the internet and friends or any source they could find to self-study. We don’t know.
The prof is in his 80s and getting horrible reviews. NYU dismissed him, presumably after at least talking about it internally. Was dementia setting in and others could see it? We don’t know.
I find it amazing that so many are taking a side with next to no knowledge.
I’ve seen teachers who aren’t talented at their jobs. I’ve seen kids struggle and/or get poor foundations because of it and I’ve seen a few teach themselves a bit of the info to overcome it.
When one is paying a lot of money to go to a University and there are multiple bad reviews, seems to me, there could, indeed, be a basis for it.
I find it difficult to believe 1/4 of the students who make it in to NYU would sign a petition without some sort of cause beyond laziness.
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The professor wasn’t good and some entitled kids don’t belong in medicine aren’t mutually exclusive readings.
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There have always been profs like this at highly selective schools. Students in the know figure out ways of avoiding them. The only thing new here is that the school actually responded to the organized complaints of the students.
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More than 1/4 of the kids who start out as pre-med in college will end up not applying to med school, so that amount struggling in this course, a traditional weeder, should be expected, particularly at a place like NYU which so highly values full-pay students. Why on earth NYU didn’t just find a way to move the course from a contract prof to a younger regular tenured prof is beyond me. Why even confront the issue of his teaching and student denands?
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That’s why I think there is much more going on than is being reported in the media. Reading between the lines, it sounds like this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
For the record, I hate the grade inflation trend, grade grubbing, and all of that but, I also think universities should be able to terminate staff who aren’t performing up to their standards.
HR is not going to release all the details so we’ll never know.
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Maybe no “younger regular tenured prof” wanted to teach a lower-level class with a high percentage of entitled snowflakes.
Or, and hear me out, there’s more to the story that we will never know. 
Nor should we.
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Or maybe the move was made by a clueless administrator who didn’t even consult the Chemistry department. Regardless, NYU must not like the 5k comments, almost all critical, in the Times.
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Not a fan of the “sign of the times, kids these days” genre. It’s a lazy, nostalgic frame.
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Hmm, most of the professors interviewed and those commenting in the Times seemed to believe it is indeed a sea change in students’ attitudes and motivation in the last few years, particularly post-pandemic. Since they encounter this cohort daily, I tend to think they are right.
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In the HS where I taught before retirement, there was a faction in administration who believed that the best teachers should teach the lowest ability students. In a vacuum this does make sense in that those kids need the most help and the most skillful instructors. The problem with that in reality is that then the best kids in AP courses would end up with the worst teachers who would then either not be able to handle the rigorous curriculum or not be able to communicate very difficult concepts to their students.
So we ended up with a split—everyone who taught advanced courses also taught some lower level classes. Since neither teachers nor administration were completely happy, that meant it was probably the best solution!!
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I’m pretty sure the number is much higher than that.
It really has no bearing on this story IMO. Neither do the comments in the NYT considering those folks, like us, are working on conjecture rather than facts.
When considering plausible facts of the case, what NYU did can make sense. The students too.
While reading this thread I’m reminded of this well known quote:
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
― Socrates
Personally, I’m glad I have contact with a lot of kids to know not much has really changed over the decades. There are hard workers and lazier kids, just as there have always been. Then there are kids who go the extra mile to try to better their world. Those kids can come from any group. Without knowing the actual student and issue involved, there’s no way to judge.
I know plenty of good kids who have complained about bad teachers in our high school. I know plenty of teachers who have asked a student who taught them the year before, then sighed knowingly when hearing the name. I know plenty of both who silently rejoiced when certain teachers retired or left the profession.
And I know kids/parents who complain about good teachers who expect excellent level work for excellent level grades - or even passing grades.
The difference is I know each situation because I’m there, in it.
None of us are at NYU to know this situation. It could go either way. With the prof’s age, the known complaints, and what NYU did, I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt if I were betting, but there’s still doubt.
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“Best” teachers may not necessarily be the same for each course or student cohort. The teachers who are best at teaching more advanced material to strong students may not necessarily be the same as those who are best at bringing weaker students up to standard on standard level material.
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About 20 years ago I went to grad school at a top private university after having gone to undergrad at a state flagship. At that time, TAs/Lecturers would talk about how they would receive contacts from parents of some undergrads seeking opportunities for their kids to turn in long overdue assignments, earn bonus points, and any number of other things in order to raise their grades. Some of the lecturers had previous experience TAing at public schools, and they noted that parents reaching out was something new that they hadn’t experienced before. They said that the the requests for additional opportunities to raise grades was not unique to private schools, though it was more common.
If that type of stuff was going on 20 years ago, then the attitude reflected by some of the NYU students is not a new phenomenon from Covid, or kids these days, etc. There might be a greater amount of argumentation or greater responsiveness from the college administration, but I don’t think this attitude is new. It was concerning to me 20 years ago, and it still concerns me now.
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