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 ...
If a student wants to learn they will one way or another it’s why people like Tesla Ford Edison passed the others.
Who will be the next victim to teach Organic Chem and be fired?
My daughter was a biology major (not premed), she said there were many people crying when they got the exams back. She loved the grading curve that the underperformers created, except they were not around to help boost the grades in Organic Chem 2. She was disappointed with C-, I told her I was glad she passed the first attempt.
Today. Getting a bad grade from an indoctrination institution is probably because the student isn’t being brainwashed sufficiently.
I had the same issue in calc 1 as well. But my professor was a very short Yugoslavian woman. She had a hard time with English. And often broke into a different language while calculating. She said that she did math in her head in her home language. She worked in Milwaukee and lived in Chicago. And took an expensive Amtrak train between the two cities. I took the same train on Fridays and sat with her. She escaped Yugoslavia in the trunk of a car with her husband. And spent 2 years in Italy before getting a visa to America. I liked her, but I could not understand her when she taught. I just learned from the book.
Most likely the students, although I have had my share of profs who are the cause.
Orgo is memory intensive but it’s not that complicated
I had two professors who had both been with the State Dept. One was to India. No wonder India didn't like us back in the day. Watching paint dry was more exciting than his class.
The other guy wasn't too bad. Except you could tell he had been in the ivory tower tooooooo long.
Hold colleges accountable, and they will be a little more selective about admissions.
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