Recently, a renowned organic chemistry professor was fired after a group of students submitted a petition that claimed that the professor’s class was too hard for the pre-med students at NYU.
Jill Filipovic writes:
The basic outline is this: According to an article in the New York Times, Maitland Jones Jr. is one of the nation’s top organic chemistry professors. He was tenured at Princeton, wrote an influential textbook, retired and went on to teach at NYU on an annual contract basis, where he won awards for his teaching.
This year, though, he was sacked – after 82 of the 350 students in his course signed a petition because, they said, their low scores demonstrated that his class was too hard.
Pussies.
College - Act I
I remember I took organic chemistry for an engineering degree I never completed. I went $7,500 in debt only to drop out. Basically, I goofed off all the time, didn’t attend classes all that much and didn’t really study for the ones I actually attended. I deserved what I got. And in so doing, I realized I really wasn’t cut out for engineering. A costly lesson, but one that set me up for success later.
College - Act II
I went back to community college in the late 80’s for my Associates Degree in Computer Science. My first class was CS101 - Intro to Computer Science with Dr. Smith1. We were learning how to program using FORTRAN (some of you older folks may remember this archaic computer language).
Our first class Dr. Smith started out with: “I expect you to call me Dr. Smith. I worked hard for my PhD and I expect some respect. By mid-term, I expect half of you to be gone. By the three-quarter mark, I expect three-quarters of you to be gone!”.
Harsh.
This was what they termed a “weed-out” class. It was to test if you had the aptitude, motivation and organizational skills to pass this class. I took Dr. Smith’s warning as a challenge. I was older at the time, on my late 20’s, I had a full time minimum-wage job, and this was the only class I was taking at night.
Dr. Smith was a prick, but he was a fair prick. There were no favorites in the class and everyone had to pull their weight, or they would fail. He had frequent office hours and was available by phone for questions (I availed myself of this a few times). I aced the course.
The Next Generation of Doctors
These kids at NYU expect to be the next generation of doctors. You might be putting your life in their hands. It is imperative to week out those who have no aptitude, motivation of organization to complete the course successfully. But in classic academia fashion, the inmates are running the asylum. The university is addicted to their tuition dollars and rather than making them buckle down and work harder, they fired the professor. Maybe the next one will let them slide, and the next time they get a class that they think is too hard, maybe anatomy or toxicology, they will complain and get that professor fired. Then they will be performing surgery on you.
I am going to make sure that if I am choosing a new doctor, it won’t be one who went to NYU at any phase of their education.
Name has been changed to protect the “guilty”.