What some fear is the case at the university level has been the case in many high schools for a long time—I even had a principal whose mantra was “the customer is always right”. I have seen administrators change grades when both the teacher and the experienced competent department head would not.
You may be right, but lose in the court of public opinion.
Inflated high school grades cause students to have unrealistic expectations in college, and inaccurate perceptions of their own efforts. I expect that happened here.
Student need to be challenged to reach their full potential. Inflated grades (in high schools and colleges) do the opposite. If students feel they can easily get high grades in classes they take and google for answers to everything, why would they exert themselves?
Another perspective from the Academic Freedom Alliance
Unless you mean overruled by Jones, this is inaccurate.
The department wanted to cut back his responsibilities so that he would only teach chem majors (not premeds.) Jones refused to even discuss it. It was at that point that his contract wasn’t renewed.
Extraordinary piece by the academic freedom alliance.
Interestingly, it mentioned that only 5% of Jones’ students failed the course, and the profound implications of not allowing professors the academic freedom to determine grades.
Per Dr. Jones’s statement above:
“After several months of silence on their part, on Aug. 2 the deans fired me over the objections of the chemistry department.”
I wouldn’t assume a low percentage of students failing is a meaningful reflection of grading harshness/fairness. It’s my understanding a large portion of students withdrew from the class after the first midterm, so they do not appear in the final grade distribution. If pre-med kids see that they are failing after the first midterm, I’d expect the vast majority are going to drop the class, at a highly selective private college. If a large portion of failing students are instead continuing to the end and receiving final grade of F, something is abnormal.
Like a number of other aspects of Jones’ Opinion piece, this seems misleading at best. Jones was aware that there was an issue with the renewal from the previous spring, as is evidenced by his correspondence and communications with the dept. head, beginning June 11, and he had been told by the department head of the decision by mid-July. (See the Washington Square article based the documents and information Jones provided them.).
Regarding departmental involvement in the decision, here is what the head of the department said:
“My specific recommendation to the deans was that Mait should be reappointed,” he says. “Our plan was to assign him to teach only the chemistry major sections of organic chemistry, which is where he shines. He has high standards, and that is something the majors specifically respond very well to.”
But according to the Washington Square article it was Jones who rejected this recommendation, not the deans:
(Tuckerman) also said that he advocated for Jones to return for one more year in a reduced role because he felt it would be difficult to hire a new professor on short notice. The deans were open to the idea.
Jones, however, was not satisfied with the way that the administration had handled the situation, and did not wish to continue the conversation. The deans, having heard that Jones did not want to speak, decided to stop considering the alternate teaching position, and instead made a final decision to terminate his contract.
The deans were “open to” the department’s specific recommendation, but Jones wouldn’t even consider it.
Somewhere in one of the earlier posts about the grade distribution it said most of the F’s at the end of the semester were changed to a W.
A large scale government study of pre-med students’ attrition through college and reasons why, including discussion of orgo.