Posted on 12/09/2022 8:12:39 AM PST by karpov
As long as college students are considered entitled customers, their complaints about their professors will be taken seriously by administrators. That’s because happy students boost college applications, affect the closely-watched U.S. News & World Report annual rankings, and are part of the corporatization of higher education.
The latest example involves Maitland Jones Jr. and his organic chemistry course at NYU. When 82 of the professor’s 350 students signed a petition charging that his course was too hard, the deans terminated his contract and allowed students to withdraw from the class retroactively. This highly unusual step ignited an equal and opposite reaction from both the chemistry faculty, who protested the decision, and pro-Jones students.
The controversy surrounding Jones has far-reaching implications for higher education today as it attempts to handle its Gen-Z student body. There was a time when college administrators paid little attention to student dissatisfaction. Their opinions were largely written off as a sign of their immaturity. But things have changed because of the high stakes involved. Students believe that they are entitled to all A’s while putting in little effort because they are paying soaring tuition. Not surprisingly, professors who have not yet achieved tenure are reluctant to disappoint students out of fear that poor ratings will be used against them. In contrast, tenured professors simply dig in their heels, citing lowering standards.
Although learning is the shared responsibility of students and professors, students are the easier target. They study only 13 hours per week on average, or less than two hours per day in a typical semester, according to Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning On College Campuses. That’s half as much as their peers in the early 1960s.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Times have changed haven’t they?
I had some teachers in college I really did not like. Some were hard on us, and all of us in college at the time spent a lot of time commiserating with each other about how tough some of the teachers were.
But we did the best we could.
None of us decades ago ever felt entitled to get an A.
I guess I just don’t understand the entitlement mentality.
Classes like this were known weedout courses in tough STEM disciplines in my day. They were there for a reason. Not everyone is cut out by intelligence and work ethic to handle a real STEM curriculum.
Of course, we *used* to believe in the concept of Meritocracy in this country.
The solution to a declining and decaying culture is to lower academic standards to satisfy the snowflake whiners. Right?
Organic Chemistry is typically a ‘weed-out’ class, and if you don’t pass it, you should be thankful, because you’re likely not cut out for the classes that follow.
Growing up, we learned very early in life that blaming the teacher for a failing grade was not acceptable in my house. The lesson was expanded to include not blaming others for our personal failures. A generality, for sure, but most always a good lesson to learn.
Tests required all answers to be exactly correct. Correct to the proper number of decimal points and in correct units. No partial credit given.
Instructors philosophy was that an engineer does not get “partial credit” for a bridge that almost supports traffic, a plane that almost flys, chemical process that almost works. Point was to train students to work precisely and with attention to detail.
Cool meme.
The was this calculus professor at the college where I went who, one semester, decided that the highest grade he’d be giving would be a C. And so that’s what happened. If you had the highest score in the class, you got a C.
That class wasn’t full of slackers. There were pre-meds, engineering majors, physics majors, etc. So yeah, there are lazy students. But there are also unrealistic professors.
And a side note, I taught college freshman physics for awhile. If only a few of my students were able to score well on a concept, I’d suspect poor study habits in their part. But I’d also wonder if I could have explained things better.
It could be that an F is from lack of trying or intellect. And a real F is probably always that. But a bad grade from D to B- may be because the professor is a bad teacher. I had many of those. You can be boring or hard to understand in that you use jargon or a thick accent. You can have an illogical teaching method. And you can teach to a portion of your class and not the rest. I had many bad professors that forced me to learn the subject another way, like poring over the text books or reading outside books Or talking to classmates and once I went to a good teachers class because he made sense. Being tough is one thing. And thats ok. But being tough to understand is totally the professors fault.
tooo hard??? switch to marketing...
I had a college class in the early 70s on decision making processes that focused on the Cuban Missle Crisis. A very interesting class taught by a professor who was an ex-CIA officer.
However, a large portion of the class screwed around and didn’t do well on the first of three exams. The professor threatened to drop the highest test grade and base grades on the two lowest scores if test results didn’t improve. It didn’t really make a difference for those paying attention and studying, but it sure woke up the laggards and got them motivated to do better.
Here’s to H. Nelson the thermodynamics prof who’s class was known to have absolute zero in it
You are on to something. I suspect that most bad grades are due to student laziness. But that’s not the whole story. Colleges hire professors (and especially STEM professors) for their research ability. Their teaching ability means little.
And that bothers me. Students invest a lot of time and money to go to college. They should be given a fair shake.
Quick story: First day of Calculus 1 for me in college. The professor was an older Chinese guy. He drew a right triangle on the board, then started talking about tangek. What the hell is tangek, I asked myself.
Turned out he was talking about the tangent of x. I did okay in that course only because I relied on supplemental workbooks.
“Growing up, we learned very early in life that blaming the teacher for a failing grade was not acceptable...”
However, a failing grade is also a warning shot. A student doesn’t have to fail if they have problems with certain pieces of the curriculum. The difference is that in high school, it is the responsibility of the school system to see that the students learn the basics of learning...language and math. These tools are lifetime and are important to the immediate future of the student. So it is the responsibility of the school system as they are tax paid.
But once the student gets into college, they are no longer being taught the tool, they are given the opportunity to use it. So for those tax dollars, they are given the basic chance for survival. And it is up to them at that point.
If you don’t like the course, don’t take it. If you are equal in capacity with the other students then you all will get A’s or F’s. But the number of students that complained were less than a quarter of the classes. Maybe it’s that quarter that didn’t understand their tools and need help there. But that’s not the instructor’s problem. If over 75% of the students pass the class, then the system works.
wy69
What is the purpose of a school?
What is the purpose of an education?
The whole field needs examination.
Cheers!
I took a graduate level course years ago taught by a professor whose lectures failed to include any concrete examples to help explain the concepts. Fortunately we had bi-weekly sessions taught by a very good teaching assistant.
There were also quite a few students taking the class over closed-circuit tv.
Six weeks into the ten week quarter the topic of the bi-weekly study sessions was mentioned as part of a question during the professor’s lecture.
One of the remote students asked for clarification. After it was explained that the on-campus students had regularly been attending the TA’s sessions there was a moment of silence. Then the whole class heard the remote student quietly say, “Uh-oh”.
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