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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This is what happens when your busy and “phone it in”…I wasn’t thinking about old lyrics…that REALLY fit.
My apologies.
I should point out this isn’t an either/or proposition. Just because the snowflakes pay well to be coddled, expect coddling, and can’t afford not to be coddled does not change the fact they are snowflakes.
So, now one of two things will happen. Either the failing students will be weeded out later (leaving the university with more of their hard-borrowed money), or, patients will die because the university threw in with incompetents. Wonderful.
I guess we can fix it by just giving a medical degree to the hypothetical 20 year old with no resources. That helps (presumably) fix the black/Latino doctor problem.
Of course, I wouldn’t want her anywhere me or mine, so the fact that she doesn’t know what she’s doing will be someone else’s problem.
If they hadn’t spent the last decade dumbing down the student body for some social purpose they wouldn’t have had this problem.
The fix for this is to improve education for that 20 year old when she’s 10+ but I guess that’s too hard or something. I mean, high schools in poor neighborhoods are prohibited from having calculus and advanced science classes?
Equitocracy.
Already happily use a “boutique” cash-only primary care physician who has made some really smart calls about keeping my old and busted up body ticking. I do that because I can and because she knows what she is doing. Nonsense like this article will only exacerbate the cash only trend for doctors whose abilities and reputations will support it, at least in primary care. Those physicians who take that route and succeed will likely maintain a rolodex (yeah, I’m that old) of competent specialists for referrals. So all the wokery results in a further division of care quality based on ability to pay.
But you’ll never know when you drive over a pink bridge.
Acing organic chemistry shows an ability to produce objectively correct answers (as opposed to what’s required in Judith Butler’s classes), but more, the patience for weekly if not daily work to keep up (as opposed to end-of-term cramming), but still more than that, a willingness to dislocate one’s jaw and eat whatever large mound of shit they feed you independent of relevance. As such, organic chemistry is a nice proxy for the first two years of med school: if you do well in orgo, you are unlikely to fail out.
The current medical education system (costing roughly $100k/year in explicit expenses, plus more in opportunity costs) is predicated on close to a 0% attrition rate (for what’s really being sold is a credential, and completing part, even 99% part, of medical school is worth about 0% of the credential’s value). In that sense, Prof Jones did some of these students a favor, weeding them out before they dug themselves into a debt hole that not even a President Warren would be able to forbear.
I was hoping you would chime in. I have no idea how solid a proxy orgo is for success in med school, for obvious reasons, but knowing how many docs have disappointed over the years with their skillsets, I couldn’t imagine removing yet another semi-legit barrier to entry would make for a better physician.
Agreed. But it is possible that the selection committees fetishize grades to the point other important features are undervalued. (Emerson was on to something with his “Character is higher than intellect” comment. )
When I think about the ultimate in medical admissions hurdle-jumping, what comes to mind is completing a residency in cardiac surgery, after graduating from a top medical school and fancy college. You get through that, you have gotten through some serious out-weeding! And yet that’s the very process that gave us Dr. Oz, and Bill Frist before him. I am not saying that disparagingly, only to notice that if the apotheosis of a process does not match one’s ideal of what the process should produce, maybe the process is imperfect.
(If I get to run the zoo, I would have applicants’ organic chem grade redacted, such that anything at B+ or higher gets replaced with a “good enough.” Unlike law, perhaps, where ‘very smart’ may not be good enough if your opponent is even smarter, medical practice really is pass/fail, though with a very high bar.)
You can pass orgo or fail orgo. Do you need it or not? Pick a friggin’ side without flip-flopping.
In the larger scheme of things, a B+ (or so) in organic chemistry indicates sufficient smarts, work habits and talents for eating shit that we’d do better if we did not give students the incentive to sacrifice everything for an A, or worse, the message that seppuku is the right response to anything less.
Is there a discussion about grades going on in your head with which I’m unaware?
From the point of view of a college chemistry professor, organic chemistry is absolutely essential for anyone wanting to become a doctor or physician assistant because it’s a prerequisite for biochemistry, an even more important class for those wanting to become a doc or PA. If a student can’t cut it in organic, they’ll fail in biochemistry and not get into any good medical school or PA program. Better that students learn early that the medical professor isn’t for them then later.
Shame about Professor Jones. He sounds like some one I’d be glad to teach with and learn from.
“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.”
Who are the pre-med students at NYU who fit this description? Are there any? Sure, we can imagine such a student, but if they don’t exist in any quantity, they don’t (or shouldn’t) have any relevance to policy decisions.
And if success in o-chem is (as it appears to be) a strong predictor of success in med school, doesn’t it do the students a favor to weed them out early?
If a student is admitted who is unprepared to successfully complete the curriculum, the problem is not the curriculum. I’m empathetic for the burdens these students carry, but the solution is removing the burdens, not dumbing down the coursework in the name of equity. GIGO requires fixing the input.
Why can’t we fix that at the primary/secondary school level? Are we afraid to shake things up? Are we afraid to hurt the feels of the education establishment?
People who share the political persuasion of this opinion writer have been in control of the education system for years. They always complain about how unprepared students from certain backgrounds are. And how that shuts them out. Why the hell don’t they do something about it?
The only thing we can affirmatively do is feed more money into public schools, but while money helps to some extent, that’s neither the real problem nor the real solution.
Tackling the actual problems is hard and will take time (possibly multiple generations of students) to make meaningful progress. Also it’s likely that the problems themselves are things beyond the power of school administrators to affect.
Grading standards, however, are entirely in their control and take immediate effect with zero effort and thought. And they’ll do anything to avoid having to think about what the actual problems are…
I taught in various California schools from 1990 to 2010. Even in that short of a time I noticed some cultural changes that I’d say, have led to the our continual descent. Most public schools are daycare. The breakdown of trad institutions (like family) have degraded trust in authority and made teachers more prized as ersatz parents and human storage managers. The access to easy “highs” via our fatty/sugary diets, home entertainment esp. social media have made the idea of momentary boredom or frustration, anathema, to many students. Consumer culture has played a larger role in public attitudes towards education where a sense of entitlement has crept in. Overworked teachers naturally pick up on what’s best for keeping their jobs, and the fewer complaints to admin, the better.
Classes are increasingly heterogeneous in terms of academic proficiency, so lessons are often created for lowest common denominator and as such, grades based on proficiency have evolved into less objective measures. This subjectivity has helped make grading an increasingly, nebulous affair, which plays a role in grade inflation. In a nutshell, many students arrive at university with a passive, entitled attitude, after having been conditioned to being passive, effete consumers during their childhood.
Assuming that a certain level of aptitude/ability is necessary for someone to become a doctor, a question that arises is when and how students who, regardless of background, simply can’t cut it get weeded out. Is it better to do so early, in pre-med, before students have incurred several years of debt and effort (recognizing that pre-med itself is expensive), even if this risks removing some students who could potentially have become capable doctors? Or is it better to allow more people to continue on into medical school only to get weeded out later, which would give academic “late bloomers” a chance to catch up to their peers but, for many students who barely eked through pre-med, would merely delay the inevitable at significant cost? Or let everyone graduate and use the licencing exam as a gatekeeper?
As we have seen with law schools, there are plenty of institutions that are little more than diploma mills that, as long as the check clears, are happy to unleash incompetent graduates who will likely fail the Bar Exam and never practice law. But there will be a few (or more than a few) who eke through it and become lawyers, much to the chagrin of their future clients. And as desperate as people are for doctors, few would willingly settle for someone who only got their M.D. because medical schools were too afraid to tell them that they didn’t have the right stuff to practice medicine.
A lot of law students and recent grads are quite strident about the pointlessness of courses, third year, the bar exam and more. Then again, they’re similarly strident that being a lawyer is about their lifestyle enjoyment, not the zealous representation of their clients. It’s almost as if they forgot why lawyers exist.
A lady I went to high school with went to law school and became a lawyer. Then she realized it was hard work and entry level attorneys don’t make that much money. She went to work as a legal advisor in state government. As you say, she didn’t understand why lawyers exist.
On the contrary, it sound like she understood perfectly.
My degree program started with a chain of three weed-out courses, each of which had a 50% washout rate. Going from classes of 200 as a Freshman to classes of 20-30 as a Junior. And still I’d say 75% of graduates aren’t competent… Not without a few years of real experience to hone what they learned. I look back at my work after graduation and am regularly horrified.
Anyone who thinks the “weed out mentality” in STEM is bad needs to be weeded out themselves. Graduates go on to do things that could kill people if done wrong. No one should be expected to die for the sake of diversity statistics.
Mathematics and tough chemistry
Are classist and racist, you see.
Killing patients and clients
Are acts of defiance
For inclusion and diversity!
According to one story I read, Jones did not offer extra credit and did not offer his lectures via Zoom. According to another Professor Jones said that the students were not attending class and not watching the videos of lectures. My students are less well-prepared than prior to the pandemic and often lack good attendance and study habits. Student expectations changed coming out of the pandemic, and Professor Jones is probably a casualty of that difference.
Organic chemist Derek Lowe touches upon the question of whether organic chemistry should be a weed-out course at his blog In the Pipeline. This course should teach students to think in three dimensions and to reason both forwards (reactant to product) and backwards (product to reactant). If it is not to serve as a weed-out course, then some other course will have to take its spot.
It’s rather astounding that “showing up” is now too much to expect of students.
As many have said in many ways, the secret to success is showing up.
They could try Physical Chemistry. That would really scare the shit out of them, Organic being a walk in the park in comparison. Then again, they might learn the theoretical underpinnings of how MRI (NMR in my day) machines work inter alia. And maths. Lots of maths.
My question is if few are learning organic chemistry for example, and other difficult subjects in many disciplines…, who’s gonna teach it in the future?
From my experience in the STEM world it will be the Asians.