A mere 82 out of 350 students signed a petition that Maitland Jones, renowned, esteemed and now former contingent professor of organic chemistry at NYU.
Dr. Jones, 84, is known for changing the way the subject is taught. In addition to writing the 1,300-page textbook “Organic Chemistry,” now in its fifth edition, he pioneered a new method of instruction that relied less on rote memorization and more on problem solving.
After retiring from Princeton in 2007, he taught organic chemistry at N.Y.U. on a series of yearly contracts. About a decade ago, he said in an interview, he noticed a loss of focus among the students, even as more of them enrolled in his class, hoping to pursue medical careers.
Two things immediately stand out about Dr. jones. He had a very impressive academic career, and he’s old. Both means that his expectations of students were no longer in fashion.
“Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,” he wrote in a grievance to the university, protesting his termination. Grades fell even as he reduced the difficulty of his exams.
The problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, he said. “In the last two years, they fell off a cliff,” he wrote. “We now see single digit scores and even zeros.”
No wonder they started a petition against Jones. After all, organic was a “filter” course for pre-med students. If you couldn’t pass organic, you weren’t going to med school. To some in the academy, this explained the reason why NYU decided that the best and right solution was to eliminate the problem, Jones.
When teaching contracts are fungible, 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.
School administrators have very hard jobs keeping the customers happy. And as every good laundry detergent salesman knows. you don’t make money if you don’t keep the customer happy, and one of the things that makes customers really unhappy is failing a course, particularly a course that’s a gatekeeper for a future profession that will set a person up for a lifetime of future success, respect and a leased Porsche.
Jones’s teaching struggles are common when generations collide in the classroom. But it isn’t just about generational differences. It is about a course like organic chemistry, which is, in part, designed to filter out students unsuited to rigorous pre-med curriculums [sic]. At an expensive private university, however, students do not expect to fail out.
On my first day of college, the dean told us to look to the right, then look to the left. One of us, he said, would not graduate. You’re damn right it scared me into working hard enough so that the washout wouldn’t be me.
That isn’t about snowflakes but about the economics of modern higher education. Any battle in the culture war is always about the culture of economics.
The petition against Jones didn’t seek his ouster, but to have their failed grades “revisited” to passing. When the admin fired Jones, students were surprised.
This does not exactly smack of the inmates running the asylum. It’s more likely a case of the administration treating Jones the way it has undoubtedly treated other contingent faculty members over the years. This episode is a bureaucratic resolution to a worker widget that created one too many bureaucratic problems. The labor issue is by far the bigger social problem.
For the admins, not renewing Jones’ contingent contract was by far the easiest move to appease the tuition-paying townsfolk with their pitchforks, so that’s what they did, even if it solved nothing (grades remained unchanged) and created problems (they were down one organic prof).
But maybe this is merely the first step in the “move fast, break things” approach to educational progress?
One of those traditions is the weed-out mentality. Courses that are meant to distinguish between “serious” and “unserious” students, it has become clear, often do a better job distinguishing between students who have ample resources and those who don’t.
Instead, universities should focus on the broader goal of teaching for equity and with empathy, which means ensuring that students get the support they need to learn and succeed, without petitions and even without having to ask.
Where is the empathy for students who lack ample resources, causing them to fail organic, but want to be docs anyway so they can get ample resources and a Porsche?
The nation is currently facing a shortage of doctors, especially Black and Latino doctors, and research suggests that academic gatekeeping is a big reason. The weed-out approach used in fields like chemistry, biology, engineering, and other STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) exacerbates inequalities in student performance and discourages students from completing STEM majors and pursuing opportunities like graduate and medical school.
Is it the fault of the “weed out” approach to distinguishing between students capable of “pursuing opportunities” because they lacked “ample resources” or are they not smart enough, not dedicated enough, not willing to put in the hard work necessary to pass a filter course like organic chemistry? Or are there other influences that make success in organic harder for some than for others having nothing to do with intelligence or effort?
Imagine, for example, a student whose high school offered no advanced chemistry classes, who is the first in her family to go to college, and who in addition to her studies has to work 20 hours a week to pay bills. Imagine, also, that this student doesn’t have a reliable laptop or Wi-Fi at her apartment, so she has to do her work in a computer lab — or on her phone. Now compare her to the kid who took multiple A.P. science classes, who has no financial obligations, and who has all the learning tools he needs. They may sit right next to each other in that orgo class, but their backgrounds place them miles apart.
These are very real issues for many students, even moreso as access to a college education is expanded to include students who might never have had the opportunity in the past. But is this fixable by infusing organic with empathy or equity, or will we end up with washouts in medical school or, even worse, diverse physicians unable to heal? Is passing organic chemistry really that important or just another wall to keep the underprivileged out of med school?
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