gentle but firm hand to the students and those who pay the tuition bills
October 8, 2022 2:02 PM Subscribe
Not rehired at New York University. NYU decided not to hire adjunct professor Dr. Maitland Jones Jr. to teach another organic chemistry class after students circulated a petition against his teaching (unpaywalled link). Jones, lead author of a popular orgo textbook, tried to file a grievance, but was blocked. Some students charged Jones with being unnecessarily negative in grading and commentary, while he argued that students have been poorly prepared for the class.
The New York Times story elicited commentary from across academia and elsewhere, touching on a range of topics from academic labor to the impact of COVID, the nature of weeder classes to intergenerational struggles, mental health to pedagogy, details of individual personalities and communications to the structures of higher education.
John Warner at Inside Higher Ed sees the story as evidence that campuses are mishandling student engagement. Becky Supiano at the Chronicle of Higher Education (paywall) explores the responsibility for student failure.
Tressie McMillan Cottom views this as a story about labor.
Jill Filipovic considers this an example of what happens when higher education becomes a consumer product.
Professor Jessica Calarco thinks the solution is for universities to address structural issues of privilege and equity.
Some chemistry professors criticized NYU, as did at least one from NYU.
Freddie deBoer criticized the petitioning students.
NYU's student paper criticized the New York Times article.
The New York Times story elicited commentary from across academia and elsewhere, touching on a range of topics from academic labor to the impact of COVID, the nature of weeder classes to intergenerational struggles, mental health to pedagogy, details of individual personalities and communications to the structures of higher education.
John Warner at Inside Higher Ed sees the story as evidence that campuses are mishandling student engagement. Becky Supiano at the Chronicle of Higher Education (paywall) explores the responsibility for student failure.
Tressie McMillan Cottom views this as a story about labor.
Jill Filipovic considers this an example of what happens when higher education becomes a consumer product.
Professor Jessica Calarco thinks the solution is for universities to address structural issues of privilege and equity.
Some chemistry professors criticized NYU, as did at least one from NYU.
Freddie deBoer criticized the petitioning students.
NYU's student paper criticized the New York Times article.
Is "poorly prepared" a criticism of the students or of the administration who let the students take the course?
posted by clawsoon at 2:11 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 2:11 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
Last year, when NYU chose to respond to teaching assistant labor unrest not by meeting with the grad students, but by emailing their parents to complain about them, I, an alumnus of both the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Law, posited that there is no school with a greater gulf between "fun to attend" and "embarrassing to have gone to."
posted by saladin at 2:11 PM on October 8, 2022 [30 favorites]
posted by saladin at 2:11 PM on October 8, 2022 [30 favorites]
I'm sure we could have an entire discussion about how and why his textbook costs between 99 and 207 dollars. for students.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:16 PM on October 8, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:16 PM on October 8, 2022 [13 favorites]
475 students in one class, with only 2 discussion section groups! You can't teach OChem that way. The university won't fix anything by replacing one prof (a renowned teacher who wrote a well-used book in the field) with another adjunct. They need to break the whole thing up into much smaller groups with more professors and TAs.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 2:16 PM on October 8, 2022 [85 favorites]
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 2:16 PM on October 8, 2022 [85 favorites]
Freddie deBoer criticized the petitioning students
This is my surprised face. FDB has beating the "college SJWs are a greater threat to democracy than actual fascists" drum for a while now, and his multiple breakdowns only seem to have made him even more of a duplicitous little shit.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 2:18 PM on October 8, 2022 [18 favorites]
This is my surprised face. FDB has beating the "college SJWs are a greater threat to democracy than actual fascists" drum for a while now, and his multiple breakdowns only seem to have made him even more of a duplicitous little shit.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 2:18 PM on October 8, 2022 [18 favorites]
Is "poorly prepared" a criticism of the students or of the administration who let the students take the course?
In my experience, students suffer preparedness issues from systemic problems starting in K-12, issues that were exacerbated by the 2019-21 school years. It’s honestly a huge problem that people are scrambling to address in a variety of ways, so it’s not as simple as “lazy students, uncaring professors, or mendacious administrators.”
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:24 PM on October 8, 2022 [37 favorites]
In my experience, students suffer preparedness issues from systemic problems starting in K-12, issues that were exacerbated by the 2019-21 school years. It’s honestly a huge problem that people are scrambling to address in a variety of ways, so it’s not as simple as “lazy students, uncaring professors, or mendacious administrators.”
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:24 PM on October 8, 2022 [37 favorites]
Another response to the predictably shitty NYT article (reformatted from tweets):
This article basically just gives an 84-year old a platform to make vague assertions about generational decline, only ever directly quoting him or his supporters, while barely acknowledging the much more reasonable explanation that this guy might just be a dinosaur. His ratemyprofessor is literally years of students saying “sure he’s really smart but he has literally no idea how to convey concepts in a way students can understand. Read every page of the textbook 17 times to pass.”posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 2:25 PM on October 8, 2022 [68 favorites]
It is just an insane arrogance that these singular anecdotes continually get used to frame an entire generation, as if that’s even a remotely useful way of grouping people, rather than maybe just being commentary on the person actually involved in the situation. Organic chemistry classes all over the country are hard! yet very few professors have 25% of their students signing petitions critiquing their ability to teach.
Wow...I didn't even realize this because of how dishonestly the article was framed, but the students never even asked for Jones to be fired! they just said "hey he kinda sucks at teaching" and NYU decided the solution was to not renew his contract.
Writing about this as a labor rights issue just wouldn't get as many clicks as "wokeness gone awry! the kids are so entitled! the minimal efforts America made to mitigate COVID RUINED A GENERATION!!!," though.
Is "poorly prepared" a criticism of the students or of the administration who let the students take the course?
I would be pretty loath to blame the students, especially in a lower level class like this. I TAed several similar "weeder" classes and it wasn't uncommon to find a student who was majoring in physics, chemistry, engineering, whatever, who clearly didn't understand the basics of how trigonometry works. It was pretty disheartening because these students themselves couldn't recognize the huge holes in the foundations they needed for university. Were these students "stupid" or "entitled" for getting upset when I gave them bad grades on their homework (which was full of nonsensical math?)? I don't really think so. Previously they had gotten good grades for work of the same quality, otherwise how would they have gotten into this program. The entire system up to that point had told them they were doing fine and their previous teachers didn't have the time to identify or fix these gaps, which probably started a lot earlier than trig. I don't blame the K-12 teachers either, they're in an absolutely impossible position. The entire system is set up to produce awful outcomes like this.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 2:25 PM on October 8, 2022 [43 favorites]
I would be pretty loath to blame the students, especially in a lower level class like this. I TAed several similar "weeder" classes and it wasn't uncommon to find a student who was majoring in physics, chemistry, engineering, whatever, who clearly didn't understand the basics of how trigonometry works. It was pretty disheartening because these students themselves couldn't recognize the huge holes in the foundations they needed for university. Were these students "stupid" or "entitled" for getting upset when I gave them bad grades on their homework (which was full of nonsensical math?)? I don't really think so. Previously they had gotten good grades for work of the same quality, otherwise how would they have gotten into this program. The entire system up to that point had told them they were doing fine and their previous teachers didn't have the time to identify or fix these gaps, which probably started a lot earlier than trig. I don't blame the K-12 teachers either, they're in an absolutely impossible position. The entire system is set up to produce awful outcomes like this.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 2:25 PM on October 8, 2022 [43 favorites]
The salient facts for me were:
1) The man is 84.
2) The students complained that he was rude (and if he was rude via email, they had receipts).
3) The class has a high failure rate.
These days you just can't have #2 and #3 together. Students are, in fact, customers who pay for a service, and if you can't help them succeed and can't even be nice about it, they are going to complain bitterly.
Also, two of my biggest beefs about the NYT article (which was clearly too sympathetic to Jones) was that they didn't quote any of the feedback that the students found objectionable, instead saying vague things about him being brusque. Giving an example of the sort of thing he did would be more persuasive, rather than leaving it as some kind of abstraction. Also, there was some bizarre anecdote buried in there about students cheating in another class and then complaining about their punishment, which was also left way too vague and was clearly unrelated to the incident with Jones. At that point the Times was just printing gossip.
posted by anhedonic at 2:38 PM on October 8, 2022 [20 favorites]
1) The man is 84.
2) The students complained that he was rude (and if he was rude via email, they had receipts).
3) The class has a high failure rate.
These days you just can't have #2 and #3 together. Students are, in fact, customers who pay for a service, and if you can't help them succeed and can't even be nice about it, they are going to complain bitterly.
Also, two of my biggest beefs about the NYT article (which was clearly too sympathetic to Jones) was that they didn't quote any of the feedback that the students found objectionable, instead saying vague things about him being brusque. Giving an example of the sort of thing he did would be more persuasive, rather than leaving it as some kind of abstraction. Also, there was some bizarre anecdote buried in there about students cheating in another class and then complaining about their punishment, which was also left way too vague and was clearly unrelated to the incident with Jones. At that point the Times was just printing gossip.
posted by anhedonic at 2:38 PM on October 8, 2022 [20 favorites]
Princeton students liked him better than NYU students, according to RateMyProfessor
Note the smaller pool from Princeton. Perhaps the classes were smaller? Then there's the newness of comments both positive and negative at NYU.
posted by BWA at 2:39 PM on October 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
Note the smaller pool from Princeton. Perhaps the classes were smaller? Then there's the newness of comments both positive and negative at NYU.
posted by BWA at 2:39 PM on October 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
There's something here for EVERYONE.
Dan Singleton's take is good as is Stephanie Lee's take above ("did").
One thing's for sure : Dean Gabadadze needs to go.
Students gonna student, but canning a prof because, as their petition put it “We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class*” is a gross betrayal of faculty intellectual independence everywhere. It absolutely sends a chill down the 2/3 of contingent/non-tenured faculty that run every university in the USA's classes and labs.
Mait by all accounts was a grouchy old guy, but he is an award winning teacher, and actually gave a shit about students learning orgo in a meaningful, deep way. He ran small group study sections, developed new pedagogies, uploaded dozens of hours of extra lecture material to the class. He taught the same class to acclaim for many years.
In my opinion his textbook - especially the earlier editions - is the most serious attempt to get sophomores engaged in orgo as late 20th century science, rather than just jump through the same warmed-over premed hoops and use the same approach that has been used since about 1960 in other main textbooks. There is only one textbook in the WORLD that is better (I've read more than 30).
Source: I am a chemistry professor who knows many of the people involved in this story personally.
Also: the right-wing making "woke"/"snowflake" hay about this story can eat a bag of Sn2 inverted dicks.
*I find this sentiment abhorrent - you can imagine why. Grades are not reflections of time, they are a reflection of mastery.
posted by lalochezia at 2:40 PM on October 8, 2022 [127 favorites]
Dan Singleton's take is good as is Stephanie Lee's take above ("did").
One thing's for sure : Dean Gabadadze needs to go.
Students gonna student, but canning a prof because, as their petition put it “We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class*” is a gross betrayal of faculty intellectual independence everywhere. It absolutely sends a chill down the 2/3 of contingent/non-tenured faculty that run every university in the USA's classes and labs.
Mait by all accounts was a grouchy old guy, but he is an award winning teacher, and actually gave a shit about students learning orgo in a meaningful, deep way. He ran small group study sections, developed new pedagogies, uploaded dozens of hours of extra lecture material to the class. He taught the same class to acclaim for many years.
In my opinion his textbook - especially the earlier editions - is the most serious attempt to get sophomores engaged in orgo as late 20th century science, rather than just jump through the same warmed-over premed hoops and use the same approach that has been used since about 1960 in other main textbooks. There is only one textbook in the WORLD that is better (I've read more than 30).
Source: I am a chemistry professor who knows many of the people involved in this story personally.
Also: the right-wing making "woke"/"snowflake" hay about this story can eat a bag of Sn2 inverted dicks.
*I find this sentiment abhorrent - you can imagine why. Grades are not reflections of time, they are a reflection of mastery.
posted by lalochezia at 2:40 PM on October 8, 2022 [127 favorites]
Dr. Jones’s course evaluations, he added, “were by far the worst, not only among members of the chemistry department, but among all the university’s undergraduate science courses.”
Given that, it's hard to draw conclusions about the system or students as a whole. It is very unlikely that his class is the only "rigorous" one at the university, but he got the complaints.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:43 PM on October 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
Given that, it's hard to draw conclusions about the system or students as a whole. It is very unlikely that his class is the only "rigorous" one at the university, but he got the complaints.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:43 PM on October 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
Students gonna student, but canning a prof because, as their petition put it “We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class*” is a gross betrayal of faculty intellectual independence everywhere.
Again, the students didn't ask for him to be fired.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 2:46 PM on October 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
Again, the students didn't ask for him to be fired.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 2:46 PM on October 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
I took orgo at NYU. It was hard. Partly this because of the nature of the subject itself, which is idiosyncratic and specific to itself as a discipline, somewhat separate from other science topics. You can't really import or build on a lot of knowledge from other sciences, such as physics or gen chem. It kind of stands alone. Partly it seemed like a resource issue. The large class was composed of an unusually large number of "pre-med" students, with fierce competition for the relatively scarce TA and prof hours. And tbh, the help you got from them was mainly "try more of this," where this was doing more reactions and pushing more electrons. It's not really something you can get big picture on at that stage. So it's split between a relatively small number of students who are doing it as chem majors, overwhelmed by a huge number of people who are doing it because they feel forced to do it. That leads to bad feeling, resentment, and a lack of curiosity. For me, orgo at NYU was my absolute worst science grade but you can average it out with others. For med schools, the classic AMCAS BCPM balancers are courses like astronomy and botany.
posted by meehawl at 2:53 PM on October 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by meehawl at 2:53 PM on October 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
Also, this is an example of how the "lone wolf" mentality of the academic world can really be counterproductive. Jones complains in his defense about students who "don't know how to study," and that results "fell off a cliff" during the pandemic. However, he obviously didn't hunker down with his colleagues in an attempt to deal with this problem, because...they threw him under the bus! If his gameplan had buy-in from the rest of the department (because they had been working together all along) they would probably have defended him. But, academics almost never collaborate like that.
posted by anhedonic at 2:53 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by anhedonic at 2:53 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
Grades are not reflections of time, they are a reflection of mastery.
They mentioned time and effort, and that brought to mind recent educational theories that rewarding effort is better for students in the long run than rewarding achievement. I wonder if the students were raised in schools where that philosophy was in play.
(I have no idea how that might apply to the overall picture here, but I thought it might be an interesting connection, and I'd be interested in others' thoughts on it.)
posted by clawsoon at 2:56 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
They mentioned time and effort, and that brought to mind recent educational theories that rewarding effort is better for students in the long run than rewarding achievement. I wonder if the students were raised in schools where that philosophy was in play.
(I have no idea how that might apply to the overall picture here, but I thought it might be an interesting connection, and I'd be interested in others' thoughts on it.)
posted by clawsoon at 2:56 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
This story made me curious about the norms of journalism as a fact making enterprise. I can see a role for stories that tell of a broad pattern by picking a representative example and weaving the narrative; I can also see a role for singular stories in which something really unusual or atypical is documented. This story left me uneasy and eventually I came to think it is because I felt like it was trying to do both things without telling the reader that. And that feels dishonest to me.
posted by eirias at 3:01 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by eirias at 3:01 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
Orgchem and Biochem were the meat grinder classes at my big state U. It was expected that you would do horribly, as giving most students a failing grade was the point- it was the acid test to prevent kids from applying to medical school.
These subjects tend to require an intense amount of memorization. My Org Professor did his level best to get us to conceptualize all reactions as essentially acid-base reactions. But this stuff is way more complicated.
But Microbiology also requires intense memorization. but if you actually excelled in these topics, and got into the Micro class, that class was much smaller and more fun.
I blame the AMA for using undergraduate institutions to artificially limit the number of doctors.
posted by eustatic at 3:05 PM on October 8, 2022 [32 favorites]
These subjects tend to require an intense amount of memorization. My Org Professor did his level best to get us to conceptualize all reactions as essentially acid-base reactions. But this stuff is way more complicated.
But Microbiology also requires intense memorization. but if you actually excelled in these topics, and got into the Micro class, that class was much smaller and more fun.
I blame the AMA for using undergraduate institutions to artificially limit the number of doctors.
posted by eustatic at 3:05 PM on October 8, 2022 [32 favorites]
Say what you will about Freddie deBoer, he correctly pointed out a long time ago that in professor-vs.-student power struggles, the real beneficiary (and often the inciter of the conflict) is always the administration.
If the students' performance was terrible-- well then, who admitted this cohort of students, shoved them into Organic Chemistry with inadequate preparation, and hired just two TAs for a class of 475 students?
If the professor was a terrible teacher-- well, who failed to monitor the situation until it hit student-petition level, then cravenly decided to terminate the contract rather than offer more support, constructive intervention and perhaps a more graceful sunsetting a semester or two down the road?
Instead of rightly being called to account for their own failures, though, the administration gets to send a message to professors that they should grade how the Dean wants them to grade, or else; and gets to send a message to students that professors are, indeed, their enemies, while administrators are their friends. In the wake of this, expect more student unrest over curricular grievances, which I'd expect to conveniently be entertained insofar as it cuts against professors who happen to be out of favor with the institution. Nice class you've got here; shame if something were to happen to it.
posted by Sockinian at 3:09 PM on October 8, 2022 [71 favorites]
If the students' performance was terrible-- well then, who admitted this cohort of students, shoved them into Organic Chemistry with inadequate preparation, and hired just two TAs for a class of 475 students?
If the professor was a terrible teacher-- well, who failed to monitor the situation until it hit student-petition level, then cravenly decided to terminate the contract rather than offer more support, constructive intervention and perhaps a more graceful sunsetting a semester or two down the road?
Instead of rightly being called to account for their own failures, though, the administration gets to send a message to professors that they should grade how the Dean wants them to grade, or else; and gets to send a message to students that professors are, indeed, their enemies, while administrators are their friends. In the wake of this, expect more student unrest over curricular grievances, which I'd expect to conveniently be entertained insofar as it cuts against professors who happen to be out of favor with the institution. Nice class you've got here; shame if something were to happen to it.
posted by Sockinian at 3:09 PM on October 8, 2022 [71 favorites]
The large class was composed of an unusually large number of "pre-med" students,
My O-chem class was probably 90% pre-med folks. When our first exam was returned it for the vast majority of those students it was the first time they had gotten below a B, ever. Many of them failed.
The professor had a pretty well recited speech about this that boiled down to "if you can't hack this class he would be hesitant for you to be his doctor." I don't think he was purposely trying to be hard on them if that matters at all. The class was half the size the next day
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:14 PM on October 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
My O-chem class was probably 90% pre-med folks. When our first exam was returned it for the vast majority of those students it was the first time they had gotten below a B, ever. Many of them failed.
The professor had a pretty well recited speech about this that boiled down to "if you can't hack this class he would be hesitant for you to be his doctor." I don't think he was purposely trying to be hard on them if that matters at all. The class was half the size the next day
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:14 PM on October 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
I saw some of his former students on Twitter (one of whom is now a Psychology professor) saying he has a habit of calling out the name of who got the worst grade, and publicly shaming that student for not trying hard. That's obviously not cool, and should have no place in one's pedagogy. I'm willing to believe he's good in other ways (professors can be talented at teaching and also be jerks).
I work in higher ed (for now), and this seems clearly an admin problem. Most professors lightened workloads during the pandemic, but this was obviously more fraught for tracks like Pre-Med, where students need to learn a certain amount of info to get into Med school. I was in a diversity training with a chemistry prof during the height of the pandemic, and she was really struggling with how to balance being understanding while still ensuring the students were being well-prepared. My point is that this problem was clearly not limited to Jones, even if his reviews were the lowest, and the solution should have come from the administration, not left to individual faculty members to test out on a student body that is currently dealing with a serious mental health crisis.
In any case, as someone who will likely be unemployed soon and out of academia, I have a hard time feeling that sorry for anyone who got in while the getting was good (at Princeton no less). Dr. Jones will be fine.
posted by coffeecat at 3:16 PM on October 8, 2022 [18 favorites]
I work in higher ed (for now), and this seems clearly an admin problem. Most professors lightened workloads during the pandemic, but this was obviously more fraught for tracks like Pre-Med, where students need to learn a certain amount of info to get into Med school. I was in a diversity training with a chemistry prof during the height of the pandemic, and she was really struggling with how to balance being understanding while still ensuring the students were being well-prepared. My point is that this problem was clearly not limited to Jones, even if his reviews were the lowest, and the solution should have come from the administration, not left to individual faculty members to test out on a student body that is currently dealing with a serious mental health crisis.
In any case, as someone who will likely be unemployed soon and out of academia, I have a hard time feeling that sorry for anyone who got in while the getting was good (at Princeton no less). Dr. Jones will be fine.
posted by coffeecat at 3:16 PM on October 8, 2022 [18 favorites]
The professor had a pretty well recited speech about this that boiled down to "if you can't hack this class he would be hesitant for you to be his doctor."
A speech that a former Harvard Medical School dean pointed out is utter bullshit. Given that he's the one who actually worked on teaching doctors, I'm going to take his assessment on the need for o-chem for premed students.
I don't think he was purposely trying to be hard on them if that matters at all.
Of course he was - o-chem is the weedout course for premed. Which is the whole problem.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:22 PM on October 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
A speech that a former Harvard Medical School dean pointed out is utter bullshit. Given that he's the one who actually worked on teaching doctors, I'm going to take his assessment on the need for o-chem for premed students.
I don't think he was purposely trying to be hard on them if that matters at all.
Of course he was - o-chem is the weedout course for premed. Which is the whole problem.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:22 PM on October 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
Also, this is an example of how the "lone wolf" mentality of the academic world can really be counterproductive. Jones complains in his defense about students who "don't know how to study," and that results "fell off a cliff" during the pandemic. However, he obviously didn't hunker down with his colleagues in an attempt to deal with this problem, because...they threw him under the bus! If his gameplan had buy-in from the rest of the department (because they had been working together all along) they would probably have defended him. But, academics almost never collaborate like that.
a) Mait made videos with other profs and co-taught the course with other faculty
b) Results DID fall off a cliff during the pandemic for obvs. reasons!
c) his colleagues didn't fire him - they wrote letters in support! - the dean did.
posted by lalochezia at 3:25 PM on October 8, 2022 [15 favorites]
Students gonna student, but canning a prof because, as their petition put it “We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class*” is a gross betrayal of faculty intellectual independence everywhere.
Again, the students didn't ask for him to be fired.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 17:46 on October 8 [1 favorite +] [!]
I was referring to the dean's response to the student's petition.
posted by lalochezia at 3:26 PM on October 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
As Mark Tuckerman, the chair of chemistry noted, they could have just re-hired him to teach the majors class, where he had been much more successful, and the students give a damn about science, rather than the main-sequence, predominantly premed, grade-obsessed class. I note there are structural reasons (see stephanie lee's tweet) why premed students care about grades above all else - again, the majority of the blame lies with the administration.
--
One more thing: Mait will be fine! He's a retired, eminent FULL prof from Princeton who came to NYU because he liked jazz, and liked teaching orgo! This isn't your everyday adjunct or contract faculty, who needs their epically poorly paid, precarious job to, you know, eat while paying off student loans.
Which makes it WORSE.
If the deans can cave on an issue like this with nontenured faculty like Mait, EVERYONE nontenured can be canned at the whim of students.
posted by lalochezia at 3:38 PM on October 8, 2022 [24 favorites]
--
One more thing: Mait will be fine! He's a retired, eminent FULL prof from Princeton who came to NYU because he liked jazz, and liked teaching orgo! This isn't your everyday adjunct or contract faculty, who needs their epically poorly paid, precarious job to, you know, eat while paying off student loans.
Which makes it WORSE.
If the deans can cave on an issue like this with nontenured faculty like Mait, EVERYONE nontenured can be canned at the whim of students.
posted by lalochezia at 3:38 PM on October 8, 2022 [24 favorites]
Of course he was - o-chem is the weedout course for premed. Which is the whole problem.
From the comments on the link:
"Weed out classes, the thinking man's hazing."
I occasionally find myself wondering if some kind of low-grade mental illness or childhood trauma is required to want to put in all the work needed to become a doctor, or if some people just work that hard naturally.
posted by clawsoon at 3:44 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
From the comments on the link:
"Weed out classes, the thinking man's hazing."
I occasionally find myself wondering if some kind of low-grade mental illness or childhood trauma is required to want to put in all the work needed to become a doctor, or if some people just work that hard naturally.
posted by clawsoon at 3:44 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
I occasionally find myself wondering if some kind of low-grade mental illness or childhood trauma is required to want to put in all the work needed to become a doctor, or if some people just work that hard naturally.
I don’t know, but I have thought for a while that med school + residency are a machine for turning our best and brightest into really effed up and unhappy people.
posted by eirias at 3:48 PM on October 8, 2022 [26 favorites]
I don’t know, but I have thought for a while that med school + residency are a machine for turning our best and brightest into really effed up and unhappy people.
posted by eirias at 3:48 PM on October 8, 2022 [26 favorites]
course for premed. Which is the whole problem
Yeah, that has been pointed out. I said that because he actually seemed invested in all his students success. As opposed to my Gen Chem prof who also had a speech about how this class would be hard, and that don't bother complaining because he was tenured.
posted by Dr. Twist at 4:02 PM on October 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yeah, that has been pointed out. I said that because he actually seemed invested in all his students success. As opposed to my Gen Chem prof who also had a speech about how this class would be hard, and that don't bother complaining because he was tenured.
posted by Dr. Twist at 4:02 PM on October 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Derek Lowe's take is interesting and worth reading, as usual — but I would say he is uncharacteristically sharp with the school:
… I'm still thinking about the damning Wall Street Journal article about the way the university seems to be skimping on undergraduate scholarship awards while using many of its graduate programs as student-loan-driven cash machines. God knows that there are plenty of other schools that do these things as well, but NYU may well be the richest and most well-known on the list, and it should be a source of shame to them. (Note: trying to get large well-funded institutions to feel shame may not be a good use of your time; choose your targets well).posted by jamjam at 4:05 PM on October 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
eustatic : Orgchem and Biochem were the meat grinder classes at my big state U. It was expected that you would do horribly, as giving most students a failing grade was the point- it was the acid test to prevent kids from applying to medical school.
Going out after work one night years ago, I ran into an old classmate who was also our bartender for the evening. Comparing notes, none of our peers, ourselves included, went on to medical school. Forget weeder courses, I suspect there are entire “pre-med” programs that solely exist to intercept and redirect wayward students like ourselves away from medicine.
posted by dr_dank at 4:08 PM on October 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
Going out after work one night years ago, I ran into an old classmate who was also our bartender for the evening. Comparing notes, none of our peers, ourselves included, went on to medical school. Forget weeder courses, I suspect there are entire “pre-med” programs that solely exist to intercept and redirect wayward students like ourselves away from medicine.
posted by dr_dank at 4:08 PM on October 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm stopped in my tracks that there was someone still teaching at 84. Everything about that was hell no.
There were only a couple of occasions when we had past-retirement professors. One was for an "engineers in society" class, which by tradition was taught by the former dean of engineering. It was basically an excuse for him to trundle about dropping witty anecdotes and occasionally marking something we scrawled down. The other time was when someone truly historic stopped by (hey, and if you're not a structural engineer, this may sound underwhelming): one of the team who'd worked out the mathematics for non-spherical pressure vessels just after WW2. This dude was deeply ancient, slightly rambling, but did go through the whole rationale and complexity of the need for these calculations. It was fascinating, but only as a once off.
posted by scruss at 4:18 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
There were only a couple of occasions when we had past-retirement professors. One was for an "engineers in society" class, which by tradition was taught by the former dean of engineering. It was basically an excuse for him to trundle about dropping witty anecdotes and occasionally marking something we scrawled down. The other time was when someone truly historic stopped by (hey, and if you're not a structural engineer, this may sound underwhelming): one of the team who'd worked out the mathematics for non-spherical pressure vessels just after WW2. This dude was deeply ancient, slightly rambling, but did go through the whole rationale and complexity of the need for these calculations. It was fascinating, but only as a once off.
posted by scruss at 4:18 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
Most doctors I’ve known outside the context of being a patient came out of internship and residency with some form of PTSD.
Those two harrowing ordeals seem to me to be designed to extinguish intellectual curiosity, and to obviate any sense that medicine is a science which progresses as the knowledge and understanding of its individual practitioners develops and grows.
posted by jamjam at 4:22 PM on October 8, 2022 [14 favorites]
Those two harrowing ordeals seem to me to be designed to extinguish intellectual curiosity, and to obviate any sense that medicine is a science which progresses as the knowledge and understanding of its individual practitioners develops and grows.
posted by jamjam at 4:22 PM on October 8, 2022 [14 favorites]
Again, the students didn't ask for him to be fired.
Just about every scandal in academia has the same 3 elements:
1. the students are not to blame, even though sometimes unreasonable.
2. the professors are not to blame, even though sometimes unreasonable.
3. the admins are to blame, because fuck. the. admins.
Same thing here.
posted by ocschwar at 4:26 PM on October 8, 2022 [32 favorites]
Just about every scandal in academia has the same 3 elements:
1. the students are not to blame, even though sometimes unreasonable.
2. the professors are not to blame, even though sometimes unreasonable.
3. the admins are to blame, because fuck. the. admins.
Same thing here.
posted by ocschwar at 4:26 PM on October 8, 2022 [32 favorites]
I want to print this comment by eustatic and hang it up somewhere in as many undergrad buildings as possible.
“I blame the AMA for using undergraduate institutions to artificially limit the number of doctors.“
As a molbil/biochem major, having to take classes alongside the vast majority of classmates who just wanted to get good enough grades to get into med school was really really awful. These were people who had been conditioned to think of their classmates as competition. Grades were curved and they didn’t want anyone else to do well. They went so far as to razor blade out journal articles from bound printed journals (yeah, I’m old) so no one else could do the required reading. They wouldn’t form study groups because they didn’t want to possibly hurt their GPA. The system made them into horrible selfish people who didn’t want to learn anything except how to get an A. As a TA I got to experience the grade grubbing one on one. Zero desire to interact intellectually with the science. They just wanted easily digestible chunks so they could effectively regurgitate it on tests and later the MCAT.
And why did they want to go into medicine? So they could help people.
My apologies to anyone who made it through this nonsense and into medicine with their soul intact. I know there are a few of you out there no thanks to the culture promoted by the AMA.
posted by sciencegeek at 4:38 PM on October 8, 2022 [42 favorites]
“I blame the AMA for using undergraduate institutions to artificially limit the number of doctors.“
As a molbil/biochem major, having to take classes alongside the vast majority of classmates who just wanted to get good enough grades to get into med school was really really awful. These were people who had been conditioned to think of their classmates as competition. Grades were curved and they didn’t want anyone else to do well. They went so far as to razor blade out journal articles from bound printed journals (yeah, I’m old) so no one else could do the required reading. They wouldn’t form study groups because they didn’t want to possibly hurt their GPA. The system made them into horrible selfish people who didn’t want to learn anything except how to get an A. As a TA I got to experience the grade grubbing one on one. Zero desire to interact intellectually with the science. They just wanted easily digestible chunks so they could effectively regurgitate it on tests and later the MCAT.
And why did they want to go into medicine? So they could help people.
My apologies to anyone who made it through this nonsense and into medicine with their soul intact. I know there are a few of you out there no thanks to the culture promoted by the AMA.
posted by sciencegeek at 4:38 PM on October 8, 2022 [42 favorites]
Weeding courses shouldn’t exist.
Teaching in a manner to emphasise difficulty or to remove lower-performing students was always the STEM people’s self-regard mechanism. They’d schedule an 8am three hour pure maths class purely so that the people who passed it could have something to bond with each other about, without regard to the fact that getting up early has nothing to do with maths teaching.
I used to wonder about the people who scheduled these classes. Did they really dislike mathematics that much that punishing schedules were what they wanted kids to associate it with?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:02 PM on October 8, 2022 [14 favorites]
Teaching in a manner to emphasise difficulty or to remove lower-performing students was always the STEM people’s self-regard mechanism. They’d schedule an 8am three hour pure maths class purely so that the people who passed it could have something to bond with each other about, without regard to the fact that getting up early has nothing to do with maths teaching.
I used to wonder about the people who scheduled these classes. Did they really dislike mathematics that much that punishing schedules were what they wanted kids to associate it with?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:02 PM on October 8, 2022 [14 favorites]
And why did they want to go into medicine? So they could help people.
... and make bank.
posted by porpoise at 5:06 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
... and make bank.
posted by porpoise at 5:06 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
I saw some of his former students on Twitter (one of whom is now a Psychology professor) saying he has a habit of calling out the name of who got the worst grade, and publicly shaming that student for not trying hard. That's obviously not cool, and should have no place in one's pedagogy.It's both not cool and not legal. I don't know if anyone actually gets in trouble for violating FERPA, but if he actually said the name of the lowest-scoring student, that's genuinely unacceptable in a legal, not just moral or pedagogical sense. (I saw something about him mocking the student with the lowest score on each exam, but I thought maybe he did it without naming names, as in "someone in this class got a 14% on the exam, and that person is a real dummy." And that's also deeply shitty, but it's not literally a violation of federal law.)
I don't know. I have had some bad experiences with professors who swore they were upholding rigor, when they were actually just imposing standards that they believed were reasonable but that were totally different from everyone else's standards and therefore failed to adequately convey students' achievements. And that's not striking a blow for rigor. That's just screwing over students to make a point. Grades are a method of communication, and they're meaningless if you're secretly speaking a different language than everyone who is looking at them.
The irony about pre-meds grubbing for grades, though, is that it's not really going to help them that much, because they still need to do well on the MCAT. I've seen students with perfect GPAs not get into med school if they had bad MCAT scores. They need to learn Orgo, not just get a good grade in Orgo.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:10 PM on October 8, 2022 [13 favorites]
To me it just doesn't make sense to decide as a teacher what you would rather do is just fail to produce another crop of scientists that year, rather than meet them where they are. I have a profession and I relished my brief opportunity to prepare a crop of young folks to get into it. If that isn't your goal and neither is earning your rent then really just take a seat.
posted by bleep at 5:13 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by bleep at 5:13 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
Does it help the profession of science more to fail 500 aspiring adherents? To send them back to their hometowns as failures? Who in the world is that good for? Or do you think it's probably your job to do whatever you have to do to teach them what they need to know? These students are fellow human beings, born only a few years earlier than us. I feel like people are talking about an alien species.
posted by bleep at 5:15 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by bleep at 5:15 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
They need to learn Orgo, not just get a good grade in Orgo.
Nah. I majored in chemistry (mainly so I could take the majors sequence instead of the memorization heavy premed sequence), and orgo is not useful for med school, let alone actual clinical practice. The best thing I can say about it is that it teaches you time management skills which you will definitely need in med school, residency, and beyond. It is also a wake up call for some students who have been failing upwards for years, because their k-12 schools are underresourced or overloaded. Which is a pity because lots of premeds who fail* out of Orgo would be fantastic doctors.
* Get a B. Premed culture is deeply toxic, and this is one of its worst features.
blame the AMA for using undergraduate institutions to artificially limit the number of doctors
It's Congress, actually. Residency slots are funded by Medicare, and increasing them needs Congressional approval and a budget. AMA has been advocating for that for decades. This year is the first increase since 1996. It's just 200 more slots, still not nearly enough, because Medicare is hemorrhaging. A number of medical schools have cropped up over the last several years to try and address the projected shortage, but without residency, you can't practice (but still have to pay off your $300k in student loans). This probably deserves its own post, but it's worth pointing out that this is a very very very long game of chess, with orgo being just the opening gambit.
posted by basalganglia at 5:58 PM on October 8, 2022 [53 favorites]
Nah. I majored in chemistry (mainly so I could take the majors sequence instead of the memorization heavy premed sequence), and orgo is not useful for med school, let alone actual clinical practice. The best thing I can say about it is that it teaches you time management skills which you will definitely need in med school, residency, and beyond. It is also a wake up call for some students who have been failing upwards for years, because their k-12 schools are underresourced or overloaded. Which is a pity because lots of premeds who fail* out of Orgo would be fantastic doctors.
* Get a B. Premed culture is deeply toxic, and this is one of its worst features.
blame the AMA for using undergraduate institutions to artificially limit the number of doctors
It's Congress, actually. Residency slots are funded by Medicare, and increasing them needs Congressional approval and a budget. AMA has been advocating for that for decades. This year is the first increase since 1996. It's just 200 more slots, still not nearly enough, because Medicare is hemorrhaging. A number of medical schools have cropped up over the last several years to try and address the projected shortage, but without residency, you can't practice (but still have to pay off your $300k in student loans). This probably deserves its own post, but it's worth pointing out that this is a very very very long game of chess, with orgo being just the opening gambit.
posted by basalganglia at 5:58 PM on October 8, 2022 [53 favorites]
basalganglia: It is also a wake up call for some students who have been failing upwards for years, because their k-12 schools are underresourced or overloaded.
I don't associate failing upward with students from underresourced schools. I associate it with students from very-well-resourced prep schools who can never be given a failing grade because their parents contribute too much money to the school, and who go on to get increasingly important jobs not because they're good at the actual job part of their job but just because of their connections. Could you expand on what you're thinking of?
posted by clawsoon at 6:23 PM on October 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
I don't associate failing upward with students from underresourced schools. I associate it with students from very-well-resourced prep schools who can never be given a failing grade because their parents contribute too much money to the school, and who go on to get increasingly important jobs not because they're good at the actual job part of their job but just because of their connections. Could you expand on what you're thinking of?
posted by clawsoon at 6:23 PM on October 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
just two TAs for a class of 475 students?
This blows my mind. When I was a TA (in a very different field), for the intro class of about 100 to 120 students the professor typically had four TAs, occasionally five. That way all of the students could be assigned a reasonably small discussion section, plus the big lectures. What they describe here doesn't seem like a reasonable learning experience, whether or not the professor is good.
I never took organic chem (or any chemistry, for that matter), but I remember how traumatic that class was was for friends in college, many of whom would have been great doctors but got weeded out quite harshly. It seemed wrong to me then and still seems like a terrible approach.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:33 PM on October 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
This blows my mind. When I was a TA (in a very different field), for the intro class of about 100 to 120 students the professor typically had four TAs, occasionally five. That way all of the students could be assigned a reasonably small discussion section, plus the big lectures. What they describe here doesn't seem like a reasonable learning experience, whether or not the professor is good.
I never took organic chem (or any chemistry, for that matter), but I remember how traumatic that class was was for friends in college, many of whom would have been great doctors but got weeded out quite harshly. It seemed wrong to me then and still seems like a terrible approach.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:33 PM on October 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
Nah. I majored in chemistry (mainly so I could take the majors sequence instead of the memorization heavy premed sequence), and orgo is not useful for med school, let alone actual clinical practice.Right, but they need to do well on the MCATs, and Orgo is on the MCATs. I'm not saying that they actually need it in med school or practice. I'm saying that they're going to be tested on it again, and med schools care at least as much about that test as they do about your grade in any one class. I can honestly tell a student that getting a B in Orgo is not going to keep them out of med school, as long as the overall pattern of their grades is good. I can't say that the difference between a 508 and a 512 on the MCAT isn't going to make the difference, even if they have great grades and great recs and great activities and are a great person whom I would personally want to be my doctor. So when an otherwise-high-achieving student comes into my office and bursts into tears because they got a B (or even a C) in Orgo, we're not having a discussion about the grade. We're having a discussion about whether they've learned it well enough to do well in Orgo II and on the MCATs, because that's way more significant than the grade.
I don't associate failing upward with students from underresourced schools. I associate it with students from very-well-resourced prep schools who can never be given a failing grade because their parents contribute too much money to the school, and who go on to get increasingly important jobs not because they're good at the actual job part of their job but just because of their connections.Interesting. I would say that the kids from underresourced schools often don't make it as far as Orgo (and the ones who do have worked incredibly hard to figure out how to do well in college and are often fine), and we don't have a ton of kids from fancy prep schools, but the ones I do see tend to be ok because they learned some study skills in high school. The kids who have failed upwards are typically kids who went to big suburban public schools with a lot of grade inflation. They're the ones who have like 4.25 high-school GPAs, and then you check their class rank and they're not even if the top 30%. They think they're A students, but they haven't learned to study like a student who gets As in college science classes, because you didn't need to do that to get As at their high schools. But the institution I work at is very, very different from NYU. I don't think those students would typically end up at NYU.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:42 PM on October 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
It's Congress, actually. Residency slots are funded by Medicare, and increasing them needs Congressional approval and a budget. AMA has been advocating for that for decades.
No, it's the AMA. Congress wants more control over residency slots both in location and specialty to better meet the nation's needs, but the AMA doesn't want that to happen.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:58 PM on October 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
No, it's the AMA. Congress wants more control over residency slots both in location and specialty to better meet the nation's needs, but the AMA doesn't want that to happen.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:58 PM on October 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
Having never taken "orgo" and never will, I really have no idea on the rigor vs. weeder class vs. pandemic vs. any of that drama. But I do wonder how much of that had to do with the professor being kind of a hardass to deal with and people just having rage at that instead of having someone who held hands or bent over to be nice or whatever.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:17 PM on October 8, 2022
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:17 PM on October 8, 2022
The students *and* the professor are red herrings. Pre-med education in the US is broken (as is higher ed generally, of course, but we forget this until we're reminded), and NYU administrators completely bungled the situation. This is a story that's both larger and smaller than it initially seems.
posted by unknowncommand at 7:29 PM on October 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by unknowncommand at 7:29 PM on October 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
My daughter had to take orgo as part of her undergrad biology degree, even though she was on the ecology track, not the pre-med track. She's a smart woman, excelled in higher math and other sciences at her rigorous private high school, and had As and Bs in college up to that point. Orgo kicked her ass the first time she took it. She did everything "right." She knew how to study, she attended all the study sessions, had meetings with the TA....but the professor was just awful. She tried to meet with the prof several times and came away even more confused and depressed. The professor didn't really seem to care that she was struggling and fully admitted that orgo was a weed-out class and maybe she shouldn't be pursuing a bio degree if she couldn't hack it. Once thing you don't tell my daughter is that she can't do something.
She ended up with a D, but that wasn't passing for her degree requirements. The following semester, she took it again from a different professor and had a completely different experience. The material was still difficult but this prof took the time to actually answer questions and figure out where a student was stuck and how to unstick them. She earned a B the second time around.
And I don't believe for one fucking second that the fact that prof one was an old white man and prof two was a younger woman of color was a coincidence. Thank God my daughter is a stubborn human; I can't imagine how many spirits that first professor broke.
Why are you a damned TEACHER if you don't actually want your students to LEARN?
posted by cooker girl at 7:32 PM on October 8, 2022 [61 favorites]
She ended up with a D, but that wasn't passing for her degree requirements. The following semester, she took it again from a different professor and had a completely different experience. The material was still difficult but this prof took the time to actually answer questions and figure out where a student was stuck and how to unstick them. She earned a B the second time around.
And I don't believe for one fucking second that the fact that prof one was an old white man and prof two was a younger woman of color was a coincidence. Thank God my daughter is a stubborn human; I can't imagine how many spirits that first professor broke.
Why are you a damned TEACHER if you don't actually want your students to LEARN?
posted by cooker girl at 7:32 PM on October 8, 2022 [61 favorites]
I'm in English looking over at the chemistry department, but...
a) The students were 100% right that the course content had to be modified for online delivery, and it appears that did not happen. And no, you do not mock your students by name for doing badly on an exam, WTH (and howdy FERPA, as ArbitraryAndCapricious noted--this kind of thing is absolutely grounds for getting smacked down by HR, and quite possibly the upper administration). There were a couple of points where I said, "yeah, I understand why they didn't do what you wanted there" (recording q&a sessions raises some ethical questions about student consent, for example), but the complaint was making entirely rational points about course management...
b) ...which could have been handled by the chair hauling him in and saying, "let's have a chat about course management going forward." But it sounds like nobody has ever pulled him in to say "such-and-such requires improvement, please do X next year." It wasn't clear if anyone had ever grieved him to the chair (paper trail) before this, and I don't know if chairs at NYU see evaluations.
c) And none of that happened because he's an adjunct, albeit a pretty high-flying one (Tressie McMillan Cottom is on the nose in her article about the bureaucracy involved). The Dean's "go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" approach is both wrong (see #2) and, given how adjunct faculty are treated, totally predictable. At the same time, most students do not understand when and how faculty can be fired--let alone the legalities of adjunct contracts--and weren't trying to make that happen here (which makes FdB's post a real head-scratcher, to be polite).
d) At the end of the day, you use the most effective methods you can to teach the students you have. If many of your students are first gen or non-traditional who need to work in order to go to college, then there may be fewer novels or mathematical calculations on the syllabus. If your students are being crushed by a pandemic, ditto.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:41 PM on October 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
a) The students were 100% right that the course content had to be modified for online delivery, and it appears that did not happen. And no, you do not mock your students by name for doing badly on an exam, WTH (and howdy FERPA, as ArbitraryAndCapricious noted--this kind of thing is absolutely grounds for getting smacked down by HR, and quite possibly the upper administration). There were a couple of points where I said, "yeah, I understand why they didn't do what you wanted there" (recording q&a sessions raises some ethical questions about student consent, for example), but the complaint was making entirely rational points about course management...
b) ...which could have been handled by the chair hauling him in and saying, "let's have a chat about course management going forward." But it sounds like nobody has ever pulled him in to say "such-and-such requires improvement, please do X next year." It wasn't clear if anyone had ever grieved him to the chair (paper trail) before this, and I don't know if chairs at NYU see evaluations.
c) And none of that happened because he's an adjunct, albeit a pretty high-flying one (Tressie McMillan Cottom is on the nose in her article about the bureaucracy involved). The Dean's "go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" approach is both wrong (see #2) and, given how adjunct faculty are treated, totally predictable. At the same time, most students do not understand when and how faculty can be fired--let alone the legalities of adjunct contracts--and weren't trying to make that happen here (which makes FdB's post a real head-scratcher, to be polite).
d) At the end of the day, you use the most effective methods you can to teach the students you have. If many of your students are first gen or non-traditional who need to work in order to go to college, then there may be fewer novels or mathematical calculations on the syllabus. If your students are being crushed by a pandemic, ditto.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:41 PM on October 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
Why are you a damned TEACHER if you don't actually want your students to LEARN?
Because at the elite tenure-track level, professors are not actually teachers, and the hiring process makes this abundantly clear.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:46 PM on October 8, 2022 [13 favorites]
Because at the elite tenure-track level, professors are not actually teachers, and the hiring process makes this abundantly clear.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:46 PM on October 8, 2022 [13 favorites]
Re failing upwards: probably not the right phrase.... I was thinking of how it is often harder to fail a student (like actually fail) than just keep passing the buck. I'm speaking from my own experience here; the one time I called out a student for going AWOL, it turned into a whole thing with the dean. Easier to just give them a Pass and let someone else deal with it. In the K-12 context, easier to promote a student than hold them back/repeat a year, especially when you know there will be more struggling students in next year's cohort too. A friend who does early childhood education has said this is apparent as early as first or second grade, and the strain is greater on teachers in underresourced schools (larger classes, fewer teacher's aides, outdated educational material).
NoxAeternum, I don't want to turn this into a physician shortage derail, but I'd be curious about a citation about the AMA throttling residency slots. Everything I'm aware of suggests the opposite, at least in the last decade.
posted by basalganglia at 8:20 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
NoxAeternum, I don't want to turn this into a physician shortage derail, but I'd be curious about a citation about the AMA throttling residency slots. Everything I'm aware of suggests the opposite, at least in the last decade.
posted by basalganglia at 8:20 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
Orgo involves reading through a LOT of material that is only somewhat organized into coherent topics and themes because the material has a lot of inherent complexity that nobody can organize into coherent themes.
And then applying that material to questions that are differentiated just enough from what you've read to demonstrate that you're not just repeating something you memorized.
The material itself isn't that directly useful for medical school. (That said, if Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader and many others hadn't stepped in with the environmental movement and started to pull the chemical industry into line, then this material would be all too useful.) But the act of going through it is a very good dress rehearsal for the first two years of medical school, and if it overwhelms you, then medical school and the practice of medicine are probably not for you.
I'm one of the people who got weeded out by orgo. There was family drama interfering with my undergraduate education, and that drama would not have subsided in time for me to go through medical school, so the orgo ordeal saved me N times $100,000 in debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. I've a lot to be bitter about from that era, but not the existence of a weed out class or me being among the weeded.
posted by ocschwar at 8:23 PM on October 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
And then applying that material to questions that are differentiated just enough from what you've read to demonstrate that you're not just repeating something you memorized.
The material itself isn't that directly useful for medical school. (That said, if Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader and many others hadn't stepped in with the environmental movement and started to pull the chemical industry into line, then this material would be all too useful.) But the act of going through it is a very good dress rehearsal for the first two years of medical school, and if it overwhelms you, then medical school and the practice of medicine are probably not for you.
I'm one of the people who got weeded out by orgo. There was family drama interfering with my undergraduate education, and that drama would not have subsided in time for me to go through medical school, so the orgo ordeal saved me N times $100,000 in debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. I've a lot to be bitter about from that era, but not the existence of a weed out class or me being among the weeded.
posted by ocschwar at 8:23 PM on October 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
Premed having a weeder is a good thing. Premed is a giant waste for time for people who don't have the stuff to succeed in medical training; better to rip the band-aid off early. A premed weeder being taught by a (however brilliant) bad or unsympathetic professor is terrible. We want the weeder class to be (be seen as) fair and for the stress of it not to be more than it has to be.
On policy - I think that docs are on pivot to strongly backing more residency slots. Maybe there was a time when limiting residency slots increased docs' status or income. Now all it is doing is forcing regulators to grant more procedure and prescription authority to physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, dentists, podiatrists, psychologists, optometrists, etc. Existential threat to the income and status of most docs; and is also strengthening the hand of osteopath docs vs. allopaths (MDs).
posted by MattD at 9:06 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
On policy - I think that docs are on pivot to strongly backing more residency slots. Maybe there was a time when limiting residency slots increased docs' status or income. Now all it is doing is forcing regulators to grant more procedure and prescription authority to physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, dentists, podiatrists, psychologists, optometrists, etc. Existential threat to the income and status of most docs; and is also strengthening the hand of osteopath docs vs. allopaths (MDs).
posted by MattD at 9:06 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
I LOVED organic chemistry, I thought it was by far the most fun subject and if I had been interested in spending my life in a lab, that is the path I would have taken. I even took Orgo 2 without taking 1 because it didn't match my schedule - so I just learned the first half of the textbook myself. I ended up working more with it later on - and still do in my work to a certain extent, but not nearly as much as I'd like.
One reason I enjoyed the class was because my teacher was a lot of fun and a good sport. She would put reactions on the chalk board and if she got something wrong and the students pointed it out, she would pause and say, "yeah I was fucking with you." She'd also walk through the classroom during exams and look over students shoulders and say, "eh, take a second look at that problem, you know this one." She was so real and that made the subject very accessible.
Of the articles above, I thought the piece that calls out "weeder classes" was the most compelling. It is not weeding out for intellect, it is weeding out for privilege and THAT IS THE POINT so only the children of the rich can have high profile jobs and continue to be rich and care for other rich people. I've always felt this way, but had so much trouble putting it into words, I was glad someone could do just that.
posted by Toddles at 9:45 PM on October 8, 2022 [21 favorites]
One reason I enjoyed the class was because my teacher was a lot of fun and a good sport. She would put reactions on the chalk board and if she got something wrong and the students pointed it out, she would pause and say, "yeah I was fucking with you." She'd also walk through the classroom during exams and look over students shoulders and say, "eh, take a second look at that problem, you know this one." She was so real and that made the subject very accessible.
Of the articles above, I thought the piece that calls out "weeder classes" was the most compelling. It is not weeding out for intellect, it is weeding out for privilege and THAT IS THE POINT so only the children of the rich can have high profile jobs and continue to be rich and care for other rich people. I've always felt this way, but had so much trouble putting it into words, I was glad someone could do just that.
posted by Toddles at 9:45 PM on October 8, 2022 [21 favorites]
Premed having a weeder is a good thing. Premed is a giant waste for time for people who don't have the stuff to succeed in medical training; better to rip the band-aid off early.
If this gate must be kept, though, shouldn’t it be kept on the basis of the potential of the student to succeed as a physician? Organic chemistry has nothing to do with this outcome. You might as well require than to become fluent in Latin, as was the traditional practice.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:15 PM on October 8, 2022 [19 favorites]
If this gate must be kept, though, shouldn’t it be kept on the basis of the potential of the student to succeed as a physician? Organic chemistry has nothing to do with this outcome. You might as well require than to become fluent in Latin, as was the traditional practice.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:15 PM on October 8, 2022 [19 favorites]
Further—a high fail or drop out rate is no proof of rigour or otherwise, a high fail/drop out rate only shows that there’s some aspect of the course preventing students from understanding the content.
Actually validating the course teaching methods to test whether the students who pass or perform well actually get the content is a much harder thing to do
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 10:30 PM on October 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
Actually validating the course teaching methods to test whether the students who pass or perform well actually get the content is a much harder thing to do
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 10:30 PM on October 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
Why is one professor with several TAs in the care of 200+ students for just one class?
Why aren't there many professors each with, you know, less students?
Imagine how much better a class would be with 20 students. Or 10. We already know intimately that smaller classes are better for students, and for teachers.
It might even give all the administrators something to do, with all these faculty to administer.
This is one of those instances where more labor is the answer, and is such an obvious answer, that the lifelong process of these institutions not arriving upon it as a solution can only be by design. It's so frustrating!
posted by panhopticon at 11:22 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
Why aren't there many professors each with, you know, less students?
Imagine how much better a class would be with 20 students. Or 10. We already know intimately that smaller classes are better for students, and for teachers.
It might even give all the administrators something to do, with all these faculty to administer.
This is one of those instances where more labor is the answer, and is such an obvious answer, that the lifelong process of these institutions not arriving upon it as a solution can only be by design. It's so frustrating!
posted by panhopticon at 11:22 PM on October 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
Hard to imagine an article in the New York Times about literally any other random (non famous) person being fired, an event that happens quite often in this nation of "at will" employment. Only academia and only in the narrow realm of a few prestigious universities does this even register as important. There are trends this coverage speaks to, but there are lots of labor trends and trends in higher ed and this particular case strikes me as impacting a quite small number of people. Curious how the average community college professor (or student) is fairing these days? I am...
posted by latkes at 11:33 PM on October 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by latkes at 11:33 PM on October 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
I've been following this with some interest, because we have a similar problem, and I was thinking of sending some of the articles to my boss. But there are so many things that are different, it'll just confuse our issues even more.
The whole concept of a "weeder course" seems like a perverse incentive to me.
The class size is insane. We have that size for our equivalent of math 101, but that is really math 101, the textbook is fine and there are YouTube tutorials.
IMO, it isn't always a problem that students fail, not even if it is a relatively high percentage, specially in introductory courses. The challenge is how to deal with it, both as faculty as management. You don't want young people to waste time and money on a subject they are not suitable for, but you do want those who are suitable, but aren't prepared, to understand what it takes and how to succeed. And few students are prepared for higher education. It was probably always so, but it has definitely become worse since 2000-ish, because of the different stupid school reforms (many of which were born in the USA and exported to other countries).
I discuss this a lot with colleagues and I am rarely able to persuade anyone to think differently, unless we literally have classes together and they can see how it can work. The thing is that recruitment at universities tends to reproduce the existing faculty. People who found the subjects easy, TA'd so they literally repeated the courses, often more than once, and then went on to an academic career. I suppose this is how it should be, but often they are not very understanding when students seem clueless in the face of what they deem to be simple problems. And if you don't get the simple problems in the beginning of the course, there is no way you will get the rest.
A lot of my otherwise lovely colleagues make a big deal out of being professors at an institute of higher learning. They don't want to stoop to a lower level. But in my experience, if you can get the students on board in the first 4-5 weeks of a course, their learning curve in the rest of the semester will be much steeper, like a hockey stick. And that might mean stooping a bit in those first weeks.
Help them find the knowledge they already have in them, that is applicable in your course. Use documented methods such as peer learning, group work, and proper note-taking techniques, and explain that they are documented methods. Make it clear that you have thought through exactly how much time an assignment should take, and that you will grade in accordance.
And on the other hand: be direct and clear (in a respectful manner) when students are not performing. Encourage them to do better. I can't count how many students I have met who were shocked to see they got Ds and Fs when they thought they were fine.
posted by mumimor at 2:19 AM on October 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
The whole concept of a "weeder course" seems like a perverse incentive to me.
The class size is insane. We have that size for our equivalent of math 101, but that is really math 101, the textbook is fine and there are YouTube tutorials.
IMO, it isn't always a problem that students fail, not even if it is a relatively high percentage, specially in introductory courses. The challenge is how to deal with it, both as faculty as management. You don't want young people to waste time and money on a subject they are not suitable for, but you do want those who are suitable, but aren't prepared, to understand what it takes and how to succeed. And few students are prepared for higher education. It was probably always so, but it has definitely become worse since 2000-ish, because of the different stupid school reforms (many of which were born in the USA and exported to other countries).
I discuss this a lot with colleagues and I am rarely able to persuade anyone to think differently, unless we literally have classes together and they can see how it can work. The thing is that recruitment at universities tends to reproduce the existing faculty. People who found the subjects easy, TA'd so they literally repeated the courses, often more than once, and then went on to an academic career. I suppose this is how it should be, but often they are not very understanding when students seem clueless in the face of what they deem to be simple problems. And if you don't get the simple problems in the beginning of the course, there is no way you will get the rest.
A lot of my otherwise lovely colleagues make a big deal out of being professors at an institute of higher learning. They don't want to stoop to a lower level. But in my experience, if you can get the students on board in the first 4-5 weeks of a course, their learning curve in the rest of the semester will be much steeper, like a hockey stick. And that might mean stooping a bit in those first weeks.
Help them find the knowledge they already have in them, that is applicable in your course. Use documented methods such as peer learning, group work, and proper note-taking techniques, and explain that they are documented methods. Make it clear that you have thought through exactly how much time an assignment should take, and that you will grade in accordance.
And on the other hand: be direct and clear (in a respectful manner) when students are not performing. Encourage them to do better. I can't count how many students I have met who were shocked to see they got Ds and Fs when they thought they were fine.
posted by mumimor at 2:19 AM on October 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
mumimor: The class size is insane. We have that size for our equivalent of math 101, but that is really math 101, the textbook is fine and there are YouTube tutorials.
My (limited) experience is that math, especially at the 101 level, is one of the subjects that benefits most from having someone to hold your hand with, if only to give you motivation to care about the subject and to overcome your mental blocks with it. I was someone to whom school math came relatively easily, but I saw it when I would tutor other kids: There's a noticeable jump when you take a kid from "I can't do it, no point trying" to "maybe I can do it", and from "this is a boring subject that is hard and sucks" to "I can see a glimmer of why this person finds thinking this way so interesting." In that way it is, somewhat ironically, one of the most emotional subjects, and a direct emotional connection with someone who cares about you and about the subject can make a big difference.
Of course when students get to college they should already be independent learners, etc etc, but I suspect that for many non-math majors in math 101 that won't be the case, at least for that specific subject.
posted by clawsoon at 2:50 AM on October 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
My (limited) experience is that math, especially at the 101 level, is one of the subjects that benefits most from having someone to hold your hand with, if only to give you motivation to care about the subject and to overcome your mental blocks with it. I was someone to whom school math came relatively easily, but I saw it when I would tutor other kids: There's a noticeable jump when you take a kid from "I can't do it, no point trying" to "maybe I can do it", and from "this is a boring subject that is hard and sucks" to "I can see a glimmer of why this person finds thinking this way so interesting." In that way it is, somewhat ironically, one of the most emotional subjects, and a direct emotional connection with someone who cares about you and about the subject can make a big difference.
Of course when students get to college they should already be independent learners, etc etc, but I suspect that for many non-math majors in math 101 that won't be the case, at least for that specific subject.
posted by clawsoon at 2:50 AM on October 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
I know what you mean, but in this country you can't enter a tech college without a math major in high school. Also the math professor has a reputation for being a genius teacher.
posted by mumimor at 2:57 AM on October 9, 2022
posted by mumimor at 2:57 AM on October 9, 2022
I'm teaching physics to premeds at a big state school as an adjunct. I've taught similar classes for 20+ years. I had tenure at a smaller public school, but I quit when held to a grading deadline (otherwise my students would lose their grade based scholarships) while I had sepsis and was hooked up to an IV.
I'm teaching 2 of these classes, with about 150 students each. I have a student who helps run the exams through a grading machine, and an undergrad who leads problem review sessions. No other TA.
The most frustrating aspect, for me and the students, seems to be that students freeze up when faced with problem solving in which the steps to take are not clearly spelled out. Some of that may be that premeds aren't interested in the subject but want to skip as quickly to a good grade as possible. But I think the era of "no child left behind" and emphasis on high stakes testing and the increasing micromanaging of K12 teachers has not prepared students to take initiative and explore solutions, making false starts and adjusting. I try to help them, and there's a regular coterie of 7 or 8 students who go to my office hours, but it is hard to give proper attention to such big classes.
posted by Schmucko at 3:01 AM on October 9, 2022 [20 favorites]
I'm teaching 2 of these classes, with about 150 students each. I have a student who helps run the exams through a grading machine, and an undergrad who leads problem review sessions. No other TA.
The most frustrating aspect, for me and the students, seems to be that students freeze up when faced with problem solving in which the steps to take are not clearly spelled out. Some of that may be that premeds aren't interested in the subject but want to skip as quickly to a good grade as possible. But I think the era of "no child left behind" and emphasis on high stakes testing and the increasing micromanaging of K12 teachers has not prepared students to take initiative and explore solutions, making false starts and adjusting. I try to help them, and there's a regular coterie of 7 or 8 students who go to my office hours, but it is hard to give proper attention to such big classes.
posted by Schmucko at 3:01 AM on October 9, 2022 [20 favorites]
Premed having a weeder is a good thing.
No, for the simple fact that weed-out classes are bullshit of the highest order no matter the field. It is the argument that somehow performance in one specific class is so diagnostic as to be demonstrative of skill in the field as a whole, which is utterly ridiculous. And the fact that you've had actual medical educators say that o-chem is in particular a poor candidate for this diagnostic focus makes it that much worse.
NoxAeternum, I don't want to turn this into a physician shortage derail, but I'd be curious about a citation about the AMA throttling residency slots. Everything I'm aware of suggests the opposite, at least in the last decade.
The issue comes down to control - the US government wants to use the power of the pursestrings to control how residencies are used to better meet the needs of the nation, while the AMA basically wants the government to just shut up and provide the funding. You can see that attitude in the article you linked from the AMA - the government is requiring the new residency slots be in underserved areas, which the AMA is against.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:19 AM on October 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
No, for the simple fact that weed-out classes are bullshit of the highest order no matter the field. It is the argument that somehow performance in one specific class is so diagnostic as to be demonstrative of skill in the field as a whole, which is utterly ridiculous. And the fact that you've had actual medical educators say that o-chem is in particular a poor candidate for this diagnostic focus makes it that much worse.
NoxAeternum, I don't want to turn this into a physician shortage derail, but I'd be curious about a citation about the AMA throttling residency slots. Everything I'm aware of suggests the opposite, at least in the last decade.
The issue comes down to control - the US government wants to use the power of the pursestrings to control how residencies are used to better meet the needs of the nation, while the AMA basically wants the government to just shut up and provide the funding. You can see that attitude in the article you linked from the AMA - the government is requiring the new residency slots be in underserved areas, which the AMA is against.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:19 AM on October 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
I took an organic chemistry class in college where the average on one exam was 17 (about 50 students). I made a 34 and a B.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:22 AM on October 9, 2022
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:22 AM on October 9, 2022
Dan Singleton's take, linked above by lalochezia, is indeed very interesting. It has the nuance born of experience -- he's an award-winning o-chem teacher who says, among other things, that most people can lean the material given time to work problems with feedback, and that the necessary time and feedback are limited by the conditions of the university. He also says this, which I found interesting and perhaps relevant to the NYU situation:
"But with that said, I will perhaps get myself in trouble by saying that o-chem success is worthy of careful consideration. O-chem is the first course that many students take where being a rich child who has had every prior advantage and the very best preparation is of little help; being lazy but very bright won’t cut it; falling behind, then cramming, is a sure recipe for doom."
posted by ourobouros at 4:32 AM on October 9, 2022 [14 favorites]
"But with that said, I will perhaps get myself in trouble by saying that o-chem success is worthy of careful consideration. O-chem is the first course that many students take where being a rich child who has had every prior advantage and the very best preparation is of little help; being lazy but very bright won’t cut it; falling behind, then cramming, is a sure recipe for doom."
posted by ourobouros at 4:32 AM on October 9, 2022 [14 favorites]
Why is one professor with several TAs in the care of 200+ students for just one class?
Because that is the cheapest way to do it, and pedagogy qua pedagogy is not the institutional priority at large research universities. It's like asking "but why do all the TAs have absolutely minimal training in teaching before we set them to being responsible for students?"
The best adjunct teacher I ever taught with--and I TAed every single spring and fall semester for more than eight years--worked incredibly hard to figure out how to prepare students in her course (Genetics) for difficult future classes. She walked in on the first day and would memorize the names and faces of a ninety student class in that first day of class. She had a well deserved reputation for being a terribly difficult instructor with very high standards who would nevertheless prepare you well for upper level biochemistry classes and also work her ass off to help you meet her standards if you put the work in.
She received a student chosen teaching award the fourth semester I worked with her. She was laid off weeks later.
I hear that small liberal arts colleges provide a very different range of institutional priorities are: education, and I believe it! But that's not my experience with institutional priorities at research oriented institutions.
posted by sciatrix at 4:46 AM on October 9, 2022 [18 favorites]
Because that is the cheapest way to do it, and pedagogy qua pedagogy is not the institutional priority at large research universities. It's like asking "but why do all the TAs have absolutely minimal training in teaching before we set them to being responsible for students?"
The best adjunct teacher I ever taught with--and I TAed every single spring and fall semester for more than eight years--worked incredibly hard to figure out how to prepare students in her course (Genetics) for difficult future classes. She walked in on the first day and would memorize the names and faces of a ninety student class in that first day of class. She had a well deserved reputation for being a terribly difficult instructor with very high standards who would nevertheless prepare you well for upper level biochemistry classes and also work her ass off to help you meet her standards if you put the work in.
She received a student chosen teaching award the fourth semester I worked with her. She was laid off weeks later.
I hear that small liberal arts colleges provide a very different range of institutional priorities are: education, and I believe it! But that's not my experience with institutional priorities at research oriented institutions.
posted by sciatrix at 4:46 AM on October 9, 2022 [18 favorites]
I teach at a school that is in many ways the opposite of NYU. Our classes are generally capped at 30, and lab classes like orgo are capped at 24. We don't have grad TAs--all of our classes are taught by faculty, and the vast majority by full time faculty with PhDs. Our faculty teach the same 24 students lecture and lab so that lab is actually an extension of what they're learning in lecture instead of this weird other class that's sort of related bur confusing because different instructors use different language and no connections are ever made. We have truly underprepared students who come to college needing remediation in both English and math, not just students who struggled during the pandemic. Our students are more likely to not have time to study because they're working 30 hours per week and raising kids than because they're taking too heavy of a pre-med load (although we have students who are somehow doing both at the same time). That said, I completely agree with Dan Singleton on what it takes to survive orgo:
posted by hydropsyche at 5:22 AM on October 9, 2022 [15 favorites]
We know what works—working problems with feedback.That's what I tell my students who are scared to take it--there is no trick to it. You just have to practice all the time, work problems all the time, go to office hours or supplemental instruction to get feedback, and then work more problems. Any institution that is not providing its faculty and students the resources necessary to do this is not doing a good job teaching orgo.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:22 AM on October 9, 2022 [15 favorites]
They should write down premed student names on index cards and fling them towards a waste basket. Any that land in the trash are then flunked.
You don't want to have an unlucky doctor, do you?
posted by AlSweigart at 5:33 AM on October 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
You don't want to have an unlucky doctor, do you?
posted by AlSweigart at 5:33 AM on October 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
Now I finally got down to reading Dr. Calarco's essay. I find this quite relatable. The course we are having some issues with is not defined as a weed-out course, and neither my current boss nor my former boss intended it to be so, but the prof. in charge clearly sees it that way, and states that loudly on every occasion. And the people being weeded out are overwhelmingly lower class, female and not-white. My former boss grumbled a lot about this in private. Before I read Dr. Calarco's essay, I couldn't put my finger on how this works, but now it seems very transparent to me.
I'm quite sad about it, because it is IMO a very important subject, and the result of this sorting proces is that most students, when they have finally passed with a low grade, move on to specialize in something else.
posted by mumimor at 5:53 AM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm quite sad about it, because it is IMO a very important subject, and the result of this sorting proces is that most students, when they have finally passed with a low grade, move on to specialize in something else.
posted by mumimor at 5:53 AM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I occasionally find myself wondering if some kind of low-grade mental illness or childhood trauma is required to want to put in all the work needed to become a doctor, or if some people just work that hard naturally.
I don't know the answer to this, but I have often reflected that having a training process that selects only people who are way out of the norm in terms of their narrowly focused drive and their willingness to jump through hoops is probably not yielding doctors who have an ability to relate or communicate well with their patients, most of whom are going to be, you know, normal people. Surely that affects health outcomes, too.
posted by geegollygosh at 6:50 AM on October 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
I don't know the answer to this, but I have often reflected that having a training process that selects only people who are way out of the norm in terms of their narrowly focused drive and their willingness to jump through hoops is probably not yielding doctors who have an ability to relate or communicate well with their patients, most of whom are going to be, you know, normal people. Surely that affects health outcomes, too.
posted by geegollygosh at 6:50 AM on October 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
I get that faculty want grades to reflect mastery and that there should be a sliding scale of “good, better, best”. Landing the first job outside of college quickly and at a decent place? You need a decent GPA or some kind of summer research/lab/intern experience (which were, when I was in school, typically GPA gated in some way).
It’s like video game reviews. A 7/10 should be a good game but a lot of consumers are conditioned to see that as failure. A 2.8 should be a “this person is OK and will do an OK job” but it isn’t. And I know faculty want it to be the first way but it’s not, it’s the other way.
posted by Slackermagee at 7:07 AM on October 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
It’s like video game reviews. A 7/10 should be a good game but a lot of consumers are conditioned to see that as failure. A 2.8 should be a “this person is OK and will do an OK job” but it isn’t. And I know faculty want it to be the first way but it’s not, it’s the other way.
posted by Slackermagee at 7:07 AM on October 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I took an organic chemistry class in college where the average on one exam was 17 (about 50 students). I made a 34 and a B.
The funny thing about this: a test with those results almost surely means the test itself has failed as a reliablie and valid measurement of student ability or achievement.
TLDR: statistically, the ideal mean score on a test would be 50%, so that observed test scores track with "true" scores without clipping. However, if the test is multiple choice, the ideal is about 70%-75% due to guessing.
If the sample test distribution is too much below (or above) this range , the test is failing to discriminate properly at the low (or high) end of abiliity.
The theory about how tests work largely originate from the social sciences, so I woudln't expect a mere hard sciences teacher to understand them ;-)
posted by soylent00FF00 at 7:16 AM on October 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
The funny thing about this: a test with those results almost surely means the test itself has failed as a reliablie and valid measurement of student ability or achievement.
TLDR: statistically, the ideal mean score on a test would be 50%, so that observed test scores track with "true" scores without clipping. However, if the test is multiple choice, the ideal is about 70%-75% due to guessing.
If the sample test distribution is too much below (or above) this range , the test is failing to discriminate properly at the low (or high) end of abiliity.
The theory about how tests work largely originate from the social sciences, so I woudln't expect a mere hard sciences teacher to understand them ;-)
posted by soylent00FF00 at 7:16 AM on October 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
soylent00FF00, I agree — sort of. That is, if our goal is differentiating students that’s the way to go. That’s not always the goal in education, though. Sometimes you want everyone to master the thing and all you care about is assuring yourself that they have. In those cases it’s fine to have a ceiling effect, I think.
Floor effects, on the other hand, it’s hard to imagine a situation in regular education where we’d want those. I guess you could make the case that if your goal is to identify truly extreme high performers, something like the AHSME maybe, then you might not care that most people are squished at the bottom. But I agree that this isn’t appropriate for a college course that many degree seekers need to take. Most of the time in education your goal shouldn’t be to write off the large lump of people, but to help them improve.
posted by eirias at 7:44 AM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Floor effects, on the other hand, it’s hard to imagine a situation in regular education where we’d want those. I guess you could make the case that if your goal is to identify truly extreme high performers, something like the AHSME maybe, then you might not care that most people are squished at the bottom. But I agree that this isn’t appropriate for a college course that many degree seekers need to take. Most of the time in education your goal shouldn’t be to write off the large lump of people, but to help them improve.
posted by eirias at 7:44 AM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Sometimes you want everyone to master the thing and all you care about is assuring yourself that they have.
Agree, it depends on the goal. In this case, the actual goal appears to be "flunk X% of the class to get them to change majors."
One wonders why the U doesn't just have a required placement exam? Where I teach, some majors have classes with pre-placement exams, and if you score poorly you are not allowed to even register for the class; however, you are not kicked out of the major, but rather diverted to a remedial course for a second chance.
I guess you could make the case that if your goal is to identify truly extreme high performers
The solution to the problem of testing for a wide range of abilities is Adaptive Testing
posted by soylent00FF00 at 7:54 AM on October 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
Agree, it depends on the goal. In this case, the actual goal appears to be "flunk X% of the class to get them to change majors."
One wonders why the U doesn't just have a required placement exam? Where I teach, some majors have classes with pre-placement exams, and if you score poorly you are not allowed to even register for the class; however, you are not kicked out of the major, but rather diverted to a remedial course for a second chance.
I guess you could make the case that if your goal is to identify truly extreme high performers
The solution to the problem of testing for a wide range of abilities is Adaptive Testing
posted by soylent00FF00 at 7:54 AM on October 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
Now I finally got down to reading Dr. Calarco's essay. I find this quite relatable.
I shouldn't laugh, but I do like me some irony.
posted by clawsoon at 8:14 AM on October 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
And many U.S. medical schools, including N.Y.U.’s, don’t require students to have completed organic chemistry before starting their graduate studies.Heh.
I shouldn't laugh, but I do like me some irony.
posted by clawsoon at 8:14 AM on October 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Agree, it depends on the goal. In this case, the actual goal appears to be "flunk X% of the class to get them to change majors."
Hah. Reminds me of another perversity here, one that I'm hardly the first to observe casually about this population. This type of filter won't necessarily select reliably for the brightest or best at memorizing. It will also select for cheaters.
posted by eirias at 8:22 AM on October 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
Hah. Reminds me of another perversity here, one that I'm hardly the first to observe casually about this population. This type of filter won't necessarily select reliably for the brightest or best at memorizing. It will also select for cheaters.
posted by eirias at 8:22 AM on October 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
Because at the elite tenure-track level, professors are not actually teachers, and the hiring process makes this abundantly clear.
This professor was not tenure-track at NYU. He was an adjunct, and like almost all adjuncts, he was hired specifically to teach. As lalochezia said above, he had actually been recognized specifically for his teaching in his previous position.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:42 AM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
This professor was not tenure-track at NYU. He was an adjunct, and like almost all adjuncts, he was hired specifically to teach. As lalochezia said above, he had actually been recognized specifically for his teaching in his previous position.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:42 AM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
This professor was not tenure-track at NYU. He was an adjunct, and like almost all adjuncts, he was hired specifically to teach. As lalochezia said above, he had actually been recognized specifically for his teaching in his previous position.
First, that comment was made in response to a prior post, which I recommend reading to get the context.
Second, the professor in question, while serving as an adjunct currently, had been a tenured professor previously, and as such would have been shaped by those particular forces professionally.
Third, given that he engaged in conduct that was not just cruel and demeaning but possibly outright illegal in ridiculing the lowest graded student on exams, I find the recognition of his teaching to be illustrative of the point made in my comment - professors in higher education are not selected as educators, because no decent educator would ever be so cruel if only from an effectiveness standpoint. Of course, given how o-chem is used, effective teaching may not be the goal here (which is also a problem.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:03 AM on October 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
First, that comment was made in response to a prior post, which I recommend reading to get the context.
Second, the professor in question, while serving as an adjunct currently, had been a tenured professor previously, and as such would have been shaped by those particular forces professionally.
Third, given that he engaged in conduct that was not just cruel and demeaning but possibly outright illegal in ridiculing the lowest graded student on exams, I find the recognition of his teaching to be illustrative of the point made in my comment - professors in higher education are not selected as educators, because no decent educator would ever be so cruel if only from an effectiveness standpoint. Of course, given how o-chem is used, effective teaching may not be the goal here (which is also a problem.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:03 AM on October 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
professors in higher education are not selected as educators, because no decent educator would ever be so cruel if only from an effectiveness standpoint
This is a very no-true-Scotsman argument. Public k12 teachers are obviously selected as educators yet a substantial number are assholes, bullies, racists, religious bigots, sexual bigots, pedophiles, and so on.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:12 AM on October 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is a very no-true-Scotsman argument. Public k12 teachers are obviously selected as educators yet a substantial number are assholes, bullies, racists, religious bigots, sexual bigots, pedophiles, and so on.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:12 AM on October 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
This professor was not tenure-track at NYU. He was an adjunct, and like almost all adjuncts, he was hired specifically to teach. As lalochezia said above, he had actually been recognized specifically for his teaching in his previous position.
Well, he was what I'd call a "star adjunct" which is different from a regular adjunct. He had a successful, full-time career at Princeton and authored a highly-regarded text. Then he retired and went to adjunct at NYU for supplemental work well into his 80s. I think it is fair to say that he is a product of the culture of academic prestige and tenure, even though he longer had the latter.
Most regular adjuncts know that they are not in the position to taunt the students, because adjuncting means you are extremely replaceable. Most strive for strong evals.
Surely the students who signed on to the petition assumed he had tenure, which is why they say they "didn't expect him to get fired." They don't understand the phenomenon of retired professors who continue to work.
posted by anhedonic at 9:21 AM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
Well, he was what I'd call a "star adjunct" which is different from a regular adjunct. He had a successful, full-time career at Princeton and authored a highly-regarded text. Then he retired and went to adjunct at NYU for supplemental work well into his 80s. I think it is fair to say that he is a product of the culture of academic prestige and tenure, even though he longer had the latter.
Most regular adjuncts know that they are not in the position to taunt the students, because adjuncting means you are extremely replaceable. Most strive for strong evals.
Surely the students who signed on to the petition assumed he had tenure, which is why they say they "didn't expect him to get fired." They don't understand the phenomenon of retired professors who continue to work.
posted by anhedonic at 9:21 AM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
That shit about calling out the lowest score in the class should not have been acceptable when this dude started teaching in the late 1960s, and it is not acceptable now. It kills curiosity, it kills the spirit of actually wanting to learn, it kills confidence, it instills fear.
The other issue is why ANYONE is teaching a class of 500 students. It's setting up both the students and the teacher to fail. Even if the class were 80% smaller, adequately teaching a class of 100 students requires an enormous amount of effort, energy, investment, and creativity. And somehow the university decides that this guy, who apparently thinks a culture of shame and fear makes for a great pedagogical environment, this guy should be teaching FIVE HUNDRED STUDENTS at a time.
The other other issue is, if organic chemistry is so ungodly, ludicrously, legendarily difficult, why isn't the course content spread out from one semester to two, or from two to three? If your goal is to actually teach the content effectively, that's one suggestion -- just one! -- that you could start with. But evidently that is not the actual goal of most organic chemistry classes. It sounds like The Difficulty Is The Point.
posted by cubeb at 9:23 AM on October 9, 2022 [11 favorites]
The other issue is why ANYONE is teaching a class of 500 students. It's setting up both the students and the teacher to fail. Even if the class were 80% smaller, adequately teaching a class of 100 students requires an enormous amount of effort, energy, investment, and creativity. And somehow the university decides that this guy, who apparently thinks a culture of shame and fear makes for a great pedagogical environment, this guy should be teaching FIVE HUNDRED STUDENTS at a time.
The other other issue is, if organic chemistry is so ungodly, ludicrously, legendarily difficult, why isn't the course content spread out from one semester to two, or from two to three? If your goal is to actually teach the content effectively, that's one suggestion -- just one! -- that you could start with. But evidently that is not the actual goal of most organic chemistry classes. It sounds like The Difficulty Is The Point.
posted by cubeb at 9:23 AM on October 9, 2022 [11 favorites]
And many U.S. medical schools, including N.Y.U.’s, don’t require students to have completed organic chemistry before starting their graduate studies.That may technically be true, but it's highly misleading. NYU is one of the most difficult medical schools to get into in the country. Their average MCAT score is frankly a little ridiculous. I wouldn't be surprised if there were an outlier or two who got in despite not taking organic chemistry, either because they had learned it through self-study or because they were so amazing in some other way that NYU would be willing to overlook a low MCAT score. (Although looking at their range of MCAT scores for last year, I doubt it's the latter. The lowest score of someone they accepted is still pretty high.) This is a case where the formal requirements for admission mask some hidden requirements. It's not true that NYU routinely admits students who decided not to bother with orgo.
For what it's worth, organic chem is not the weed-out at the institution at which I work. Professors swear that there's no intentional weed-out, and I tend to believe them. And the make-it-or-break-it semester for most students is the one before they take orgo, because that's typically the first time they're taking two lab classes at the same time. Most of the students who get through that semester continue to do ok, although of course doing ok is not really enough to get into med school. (And honestly, those are the students who break my heart: not the people who are failing classes and noping out of pre-med, but the ones who are working their butts off for consistent Bs, would probably be perfectly great doctors, and are probably not going to get into med school. There's no particular weed-out point where they all quit, and some of them do end up in med school by some combination of finishing strong, doing post-bacc work, doing well on their MCAT, and/or applying to DO schools.) Some students struggle a lot with orgo, just as some students struggle with physics or their first bio class, but it's not really any more likely to end pre-med careers than any other class is.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:26 AM on October 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
Pre-med students take different physics courses from physics majors and that has always seemed appropriate. We should do similarly with organic chemistry.
posted by neuron at 10:11 AM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by neuron at 10:11 AM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I only wish that there were separate courses and majors for those wishing to become doctors.
Classes that would have been better (at least in my case) if they didn’t have pre-med students in them:
Biology
Chemistry
Organic Chemistry
Physics
Biochemistry
Molecular Biology
Microbiology
Immunology
Other things that would have been better without pre-med students in them:
Undergrad research
PreDoc research
Grad school
Postdoc
As much as having classes only for those going into medicine may sound like an awesome idea, fixing the shitty culture would really be a better idea - both in terms of people getting an actual useful education as well as in terms of the culture of medicine.
We are all talking about the US here. Many other countries don’t have these issues?
posted by sciencegeek at 10:52 AM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Classes that would have been better (at least in my case) if they didn’t have pre-med students in them:
Biology
Chemistry
Organic Chemistry
Physics
Biochemistry
Molecular Biology
Microbiology
Immunology
Other things that would have been better without pre-med students in them:
Undergrad research
PreDoc research
Grad school
Postdoc
As much as having classes only for those going into medicine may sound like an awesome idea, fixing the shitty culture would really be a better idea - both in terms of people getting an actual useful education as well as in terms of the culture of medicine.
We are all talking about the US here. Many other countries don’t have these issues?
posted by sciencegeek at 10:52 AM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
We are all talking about the US here. Many other countries don’t have these issues?
Here, pre-med is its own universe, not in any way related to the other STEM subjects. Also, education is free and there are stipends for everyone, even students from other EU countries and Norway, Iceland, Greenland and the Faeroes.
Still as I have said, we manage to have similar problems in education.
posted by mumimor at 11:25 AM on October 9, 2022
Here, pre-med is its own universe, not in any way related to the other STEM subjects. Also, education is free and there are stipends for everyone, even students from other EU countries and Norway, Iceland, Greenland and the Faeroes.
Still as I have said, we manage to have similar problems in education.
posted by mumimor at 11:25 AM on October 9, 2022
On the topic of the specific professor’s teaching quality, that can vary over time and under different circumstances. Other folks have pointed out the different circumstances upthread. I note that, on the extreme end of such things, I have a former colleague who was a reasonable teacher - students liked him anyway - but then fell down an alt right rabbit hole and ended up harassing current and former students on social media. That’s a very extreme case, but people do change.
posted by eviemath at 12:50 PM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 12:50 PM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
The other issue is why ANYONE is teaching a class of 500 students. It's setting up both the students and the teacher to fail.
The university (some abstract General University, this isn't NYU specific) doesn't want to actually graduate 500 pre-med students. They want to graduate more like 75-100. They admit 500 because picking who is going to be successful in getting into med school based on high school transcripts, SATs, etc is basically a crapshoot, except at the extrema. So you admit 500, charge them all $$$, and throw them into a 500 person stadium class and let God sort it out. The students who do well enough in orgo probably have a high enough ability or tolerance for stupid BS that they'll also succeed on the MCAT.
Another piece of the puzzle is that teaching a class like this for non-majors generally sucks. If it's not adjuncts teaching it, it's the most junior faculty, because anyone with any seniority gets out of having to teach a class of half a thousand, each of whom cheerfully opens with "oh, I hate [subject you have spent your entire life on]!" if/when they come to office hours. Often the department views classes like this as a very annoying burden imposed on them by the university at large. They're not particularly interested in making the experience a good one for anyone involved.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 12:55 PM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
The university (some abstract General University, this isn't NYU specific) doesn't want to actually graduate 500 pre-med students. They want to graduate more like 75-100. They admit 500 because picking who is going to be successful in getting into med school based on high school transcripts, SATs, etc is basically a crapshoot, except at the extrema. So you admit 500, charge them all $$$, and throw them into a 500 person stadium class and let God sort it out. The students who do well enough in orgo probably have a high enough ability or tolerance for stupid BS that they'll also succeed on the MCAT.
Another piece of the puzzle is that teaching a class like this for non-majors generally sucks. If it's not adjuncts teaching it, it's the most junior faculty, because anyone with any seniority gets out of having to teach a class of half a thousand, each of whom cheerfully opens with "oh, I hate [subject you have spent your entire life on]!" if/when they come to office hours. Often the department views classes like this as a very annoying burden imposed on them by the university at large. They're not particularly interested in making the experience a good one for anyone involved.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 12:55 PM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
First, that comment was made in response to a prior post, which I recommend reading to get the context.
I read it, thanks! In my comment, I was merely pointing out that the general pronouncement you made does not actually apply to this specific case. I apologize for not making that clear.
Second, the professor in question, while serving as an adjunct currently, had been a tenured professor previously, and as such would have been shaped by those particular forces professionally.
True, but also irrelevant. He was still hired into this position as a teacher, not as research faculty. Leading a large premed-track organic chemistry course is not a sinecure for an emeritus prof: that's a substantial, difficult teaching load. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the department almost certainly hired him for this class because at that time, he had a reputation as an innovative and effective educator in organic chemistry.
Third, given that he engaged in conduct that was not just cruel and demeaning but possibly outright illegal in ridiculing the lowest graded student on exams, I find the recognition of his teaching to be illustrative of the point made in my comment - professors in higher education are not selected as educators, because no decent educator would ever be so cruel if only from an effectiveness standpoint. Of course, given how o-chem is used, effective teaching may not be the goal here (which is also a problem.)
Others have addressed the logical problems with this argument, so I'll just say that it is not true that "professors in higher education" are not selected for teaching ability. For one thing, you appear to specifically mean "research-track professors at top research universities," not teaching-track faculty at research universities (as in the current case) -- and much less professors at liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or other primarily-undergraduate institutions. All of these faculty are "professors in higher education" and yet are selected for, and primarily evaluated by, their ability to teach. But even for those research-track faculty at research universities, it's still not true that there is no selection for teaching skills. Unless you're appointed at a med school or another professional school, teaching is still likely to be a significant part of your effort (50-40-10 is not an uncommon split, even at an R1, between research, teaching, and service). While you certainly won't get tenure at an R1 on teaching alone (unless you're in a very unusual position), teaching is still a major part of your yearly review and tenure packet, and bad student and peer evaluations can absolutely still sink you.
Relatedly, it's also worth asking who decides what is considered "effective teaching." Student evaluations, for example, are known to be both imprecise and biased. Most damningly, they correlate much more closely with class difficulty, the instructor's gender/age/race, and instructor "likability" than they do to student learning outcomes, as measured by student performance in multi-section classes. Obviously, singling out students for humiliation is not acceptable and should be addressed. But also, just because some subjects or classes are particularly difficult and demanding, it is not actually evidence that their teachers are uninterested in "effective teaching."
posted by en forme de poire at 1:13 PM on October 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
I read it, thanks! In my comment, I was merely pointing out that the general pronouncement you made does not actually apply to this specific case. I apologize for not making that clear.
Second, the professor in question, while serving as an adjunct currently, had been a tenured professor previously, and as such would have been shaped by those particular forces professionally.
True, but also irrelevant. He was still hired into this position as a teacher, not as research faculty. Leading a large premed-track organic chemistry course is not a sinecure for an emeritus prof: that's a substantial, difficult teaching load. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the department almost certainly hired him for this class because at that time, he had a reputation as an innovative and effective educator in organic chemistry.
Third, given that he engaged in conduct that was not just cruel and demeaning but possibly outright illegal in ridiculing the lowest graded student on exams, I find the recognition of his teaching to be illustrative of the point made in my comment - professors in higher education are not selected as educators, because no decent educator would ever be so cruel if only from an effectiveness standpoint. Of course, given how o-chem is used, effective teaching may not be the goal here (which is also a problem.)
Others have addressed the logical problems with this argument, so I'll just say that it is not true that "professors in higher education" are not selected for teaching ability. For one thing, you appear to specifically mean "research-track professors at top research universities," not teaching-track faculty at research universities (as in the current case) -- and much less professors at liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or other primarily-undergraduate institutions. All of these faculty are "professors in higher education" and yet are selected for, and primarily evaluated by, their ability to teach. But even for those research-track faculty at research universities, it's still not true that there is no selection for teaching skills. Unless you're appointed at a med school or another professional school, teaching is still likely to be a significant part of your effort (50-40-10 is not an uncommon split, even at an R1, between research, teaching, and service). While you certainly won't get tenure at an R1 on teaching alone (unless you're in a very unusual position), teaching is still a major part of your yearly review and tenure packet, and bad student and peer evaluations can absolutely still sink you.
Relatedly, it's also worth asking who decides what is considered "effective teaching." Student evaluations, for example, are known to be both imprecise and biased. Most damningly, they correlate much more closely with class difficulty, the instructor's gender/age/race, and instructor "likability" than they do to student learning outcomes, as measured by student performance in multi-section classes. Obviously, singling out students for humiliation is not acceptable and should be addressed. But also, just because some subjects or classes are particularly difficult and demanding, it is not actually evidence that their teachers are uninterested in "effective teaching."
posted by en forme de poire at 1:13 PM on October 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
As someone who got not-asked-back after a semester as an adjunct at CUNY because I pushed back against them forcing my online-only students to have to come on campus to take their finals in person during a major COVID spike, I gotta say I don't feel super bad for someone who got let go for being actively shitty to particular students & not being willing to adapt to online teaching. I'm proud I stood up for my students even though it sucked for me & I have no respect for teachers who see their job as being there to weed out the undesirables or any other totally inequitable bullshit.
posted by augustimagination at 1:49 PM on October 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by augustimagination at 1:49 PM on October 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
The other other issue is, if organic chemistry is so ungodly, ludicrously, legendarily difficult, why isn't the course content spread out from one semester to two, or from two to three?
In NYU, it's split: There's Orgo I, and then if you pass that, Orgo II. Or you can take them both during a single summer as an accelerated option. That one is quite a rollercoaster.
posted by meehawl at 1:51 PM on October 9, 2022
In NYU, it's split: There's Orgo I, and then if you pass that, Orgo II. Or you can take them both during a single summer as an accelerated option. That one is quite a rollercoaster.
posted by meehawl at 1:51 PM on October 9, 2022
I was going to be a math major until I went to college.
I HATE CHEMISTRY.
Because it's math, that really isn't. Because atoms some times do their own thing...
Which makes solving the equation impossible.
I think I got a C in high school chemistry.
After hitting the college math curriculum, which wasn't the fun puzzle part about "solve this equation", but instead, here is why this works, (and the horrific math professors there at the time), I drifted. My roommate took a bunch of geology. For Romantic reasons, I transferred to a different school. Took a Geology class at the new school. Thought it was pretty cool. Had fun at a lab class! Decided the romantic transfer had been a mistake. Went back. Got a degree in Geology. And minerals and why they do what they do, which is chemistry, was there, but I made it barely.
Decide I don't want to work for an oil or mining company, after spending a summer working in Texas oil fields as a "Rousabout", (just physical labor to keep shit running).
So decided to switch to Bio. Took tons of bio and botany at Southern Oregon, had NPR's own Frank Lang as my professor. He was wonderful.
But then had to transfer up to the U of O. And a requirement was Organic Chemistry. Shit.
I never made it through the program, for reasons, but I was able to get a C in Organic Chemistry at the University of Oregon. Which is pretty much the "Achievement Unlocked" for me.
If the class is a weeder, then so be it. Students who just got weeded, will probably complain. As will their parents.
But, not every "good student" should be allowed to be a doctor? In any skilled position, (doctor), where other people's lives depend on it, shouldn't some knowledge be required?
It's a harsh reality. For many years I wrote software for a vital signs monitor, that connected to a Windows application. That had to go through a couple of interfaces to get to the hospital's Medical Record System. Originally we had all kinds or monitors and alarms, EKG, SpO2, etc.
Those got dialed back. But during that time, there was always the possibility, that someone would die, because my code missed something...
I didn't need Organic Chemistry. It is a pretty small sample of people who do. Can't imagine a Doctor saying, "wait, that ion is not going there".
posted by Windopaene at 1:54 PM on October 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I HATE CHEMISTRY.
Because it's math, that really isn't. Because atoms some times do their own thing...
Which makes solving the equation impossible.
I think I got a C in high school chemistry.
After hitting the college math curriculum, which wasn't the fun puzzle part about "solve this equation", but instead, here is why this works, (and the horrific math professors there at the time), I drifted. My roommate took a bunch of geology. For Romantic reasons, I transferred to a different school. Took a Geology class at the new school. Thought it was pretty cool. Had fun at a lab class! Decided the romantic transfer had been a mistake. Went back. Got a degree in Geology. And minerals and why they do what they do, which is chemistry, was there, but I made it barely.
Decide I don't want to work for an oil or mining company, after spending a summer working in Texas oil fields as a "Rousabout", (just physical labor to keep shit running).
So decided to switch to Bio. Took tons of bio and botany at Southern Oregon, had NPR's own Frank Lang as my professor. He was wonderful.
But then had to transfer up to the U of O. And a requirement was Organic Chemistry. Shit.
I never made it through the program, for reasons, but I was able to get a C in Organic Chemistry at the University of Oregon. Which is pretty much the "Achievement Unlocked" for me.
If the class is a weeder, then so be it. Students who just got weeded, will probably complain. As will their parents.
But, not every "good student" should be allowed to be a doctor? In any skilled position, (doctor), where other people's lives depend on it, shouldn't some knowledge be required?
It's a harsh reality. For many years I wrote software for a vital signs monitor, that connected to a Windows application. That had to go through a couple of interfaces to get to the hospital's Medical Record System. Originally we had all kinds or monitors and alarms, EKG, SpO2, etc.
Those got dialed back. But during that time, there was always the possibility, that someone would die, because my code missed something...
I didn't need Organic Chemistry. It is a pretty small sample of people who do. Can't imagine a Doctor saying, "wait, that ion is not going there".
posted by Windopaene at 1:54 PM on October 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I would like to make a case that med school admissions be based on a) meeting some basic cutoff (like whatever the reasonable but not super great MCAT score is?) then b) random lottery - perhaps weighted to increase acceptance from certain zip codes or some other legally-acceptable stand-in for expanding race and class diversity among doctors. I have yet to hear a doctor arguing that these pre-recs like physics improve their practice (maybe for certain specialties and certain physician researchers but not broadly among the majority). And showing you're able to endure punishing and cruel residencies is no virtue - while we're at it the residency process is desperately in need of reform. We just had an intern kill herself at work this year like a month into her residency.
I'm a nurse in a unionized setting where hiring for most classifications contractually has to prioritize internal hires. My department is an usual special snowflake department that used to fly under the radar and only attracted seemingly unique people who were driven to do this special work. But as we grew more folks started applying for transfers in, so it became the case that we now hire based exclusively on seniority. The 'quality' of the new workers is no better and no worse than before. But we have had to incorporate better training, more expansive support mechanisms, more methods for having balance between work and personal needs, etc. Making the department work for whoever shows up has made our work better and our team stronger.
There's nothing special and magical about the people who make it through the abusive training process to become doctors. Except that the majority come from extreme privilege.
posted by latkes at 2:03 PM on October 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
I'm a nurse in a unionized setting where hiring for most classifications contractually has to prioritize internal hires. My department is an usual special snowflake department that used to fly under the radar and only attracted seemingly unique people who were driven to do this special work. But as we grew more folks started applying for transfers in, so it became the case that we now hire based exclusively on seniority. The 'quality' of the new workers is no better and no worse than before. But we have had to incorporate better training, more expansive support mechanisms, more methods for having balance between work and personal needs, etc. Making the department work for whoever shows up has made our work better and our team stronger.
There's nothing special and magical about the people who make it through the abusive training process to become doctors. Except that the majority come from extreme privilege.
posted by latkes at 2:03 PM on October 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
But, not every "good student" should be allowed to be a doctor? In any skilled position, (doctor), where other people's lives depend on it, shouldn't some knowledge be required?
Actual medical educators have come out stating that no, orgo as taught in premed courses doesn't have any real application to the actual practice of medicine - that its only purpose is to serve as a barrier to entry to med school.
The whole concept of a weed-out course is utter bullshit, but a weed-out course built on knowledge that is not necessary is utter bullshit squared.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:10 PM on October 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
Actual medical educators have come out stating that no, orgo as taught in premed courses doesn't have any real application to the actual practice of medicine - that its only purpose is to serve as a barrier to entry to med school.
The whole concept of a weed-out course is utter bullshit, but a weed-out course built on knowledge that is not necessary is utter bullshit squared.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:10 PM on October 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
I get it.
I could see no reason to need Organic Chemistry in the degree I was trying for.
posted by Windopaene at 2:28 PM on October 9, 2022
I could see no reason to need Organic Chemistry in the degree I was trying for.
posted by Windopaene at 2:28 PM on October 9, 2022
having to take classes alongside the vast majority of classmates who just wanted to get good enough grades to get into med school was really awful.
sciencegeek
It was like that back in my slide rule day era.
The chemical engineering students just hated it.
They had their usual massive workload while taking orgo. they always got crap marks. It was the norm.
The premeds would game the system by taking the absolute lightest, easiest course load they could get away with while taking orgo.
And the engineers mentioned the almost cutthroat competitive nature of the premeds.
--
I see my former school has changed it some
Seperate courses for engineering students.
Also has a seperate organic chemistry for life sciences now
--
350 students in an organic chemistry class is insane.
posted by yyz at 2:35 PM on October 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
sciencegeek
It was like that back in my slide rule day era.
The chemical engineering students just hated it.
They had their usual massive workload while taking orgo. they always got crap marks. It was the norm.
The premeds would game the system by taking the absolute lightest, easiest course load they could get away with while taking orgo.
And the engineers mentioned the almost cutthroat competitive nature of the premeds.
--
I see my former school has changed it some
Seperate courses for engineering students.
Also has a seperate organic chemistry for life sciences now
--
350 students in an organic chemistry class is insane.
posted by yyz at 2:35 PM on October 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
That shit about calling out the lowest score in the class should not have been acceptable when this dude started teaching in the late 1960s, and it is not acceptable now. It kills curiosity, it kills the spirit of actually wanting to learn, it kills confidence, it instills fear.
Anyone have a link for this?
posted by Wood at 2:45 PM on October 9, 2022
Anyone have a link for this?
posted by Wood at 2:45 PM on October 9, 2022
There are alternatives to having a weeder class. They all have tradeoffs or require major structural changes. For example, relying even more heavily on standardized tests has the many well-known problems. Alternatively, you could fail people out of medical school / training. That happens very uncommonly now (most failures to graduate / practice are diversions onto another career), and nobody wants to inflict the enormous opportunity cost and tuition cost on people of failing in M4 or residency. You could also validly stop asking so much of premeds / med students / doctors. The implied requirements have gotten absurdly tight as the salary of (specialist) physicians has increased and the number of potential candidates has gone up, and now vastly exceed what most physicians will need to be successful in practice. You can manipulate any of the levers for the determinants there, or you will have to somehow lottery the slots.
This is stealthily happening mostly by redefining items from practice-of-medicine to practice-of-nursing. Getting through training as an advanced practice nurse, nurse practitioner, CRNA, or the other post-RN options certainly isn't easy, but it doesn't have equivalent requirements to the MD path. I think that the nursing lobby is largely correct that these are jobs that are safely filled without MD training (and I say this from a clinical specialty that is at constant odds with the nursing counterpart advocacy org). I am jealous of the nursing educational pathway, which allows people to develop into the skills and interests later in life without a hugely specific up-front investment. I wish it was easier to go from 2nd year general education to BSN at most undergrads.
If you're going to have a weeder class, o-chem is a pretty good option. I agree with all the above that o-chem's content is not really useful for physician training or practice. The things that make it a good weeded / test-out class are:
(1) it requires learning A Lot Of Stuff, internally systematizing that material, and being able to apply / synthesize it in ways that aren't pre-packaged. This is a huge part of medical training and not very like year 1-2 mathematics or physics. The quantity of stuff is more than can be discussed in class, and many students have never seen this kind of difficulty in HS or been expected to learn semi-independently.
(2) Nobody starts with a strong base in the content. O-chem isn't something that even very fancy HS chemistry will have meaningfully introduced, or that general chemistry will have helped you a lot for (unlike, biology or math). Great instruction and modern methods mitigate this by making concepts from elsewhere more useful, but the things that students need to succeed are general study skills like time management, getting and accepting feedback, and learning from difficult problems.
(3) It has generally agreed content endpoint and criteria, unlike humanities or writing focused classes. This means that you can verify mastery on a standardized test, limiting the incentive for grade drift by universities.
(4) It occurs reasonably early in an undergrad career and does not have a lot of other input dependence. It does not require (or is even really helped by) mathematics more advanced than HS level algebra (unlike physics). Unlike many other challenging classes, students can take it early enough to realize that maybe they don't have the skills to do well in medical school. Students going into essentially any major field of study can take gen-chem 1+2 and o-chem to evaluate their prospects at the end of semester 3 (or earlier if they tested out of gen-chem), unlike say immunology or advanced biochemistry.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 2:47 PM on October 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
This is stealthily happening mostly by redefining items from practice-of-medicine to practice-of-nursing. Getting through training as an advanced practice nurse, nurse practitioner, CRNA, or the other post-RN options certainly isn't easy, but it doesn't have equivalent requirements to the MD path. I think that the nursing lobby is largely correct that these are jobs that are safely filled without MD training (and I say this from a clinical specialty that is at constant odds with the nursing counterpart advocacy org). I am jealous of the nursing educational pathway, which allows people to develop into the skills and interests later in life without a hugely specific up-front investment. I wish it was easier to go from 2nd year general education to BSN at most undergrads.
If you're going to have a weeder class, o-chem is a pretty good option. I agree with all the above that o-chem's content is not really useful for physician training or practice. The things that make it a good weeded / test-out class are:
(1) it requires learning A Lot Of Stuff, internally systematizing that material, and being able to apply / synthesize it in ways that aren't pre-packaged. This is a huge part of medical training and not very like year 1-2 mathematics or physics. The quantity of stuff is more than can be discussed in class, and many students have never seen this kind of difficulty in HS or been expected to learn semi-independently.
(2) Nobody starts with a strong base in the content. O-chem isn't something that even very fancy HS chemistry will have meaningfully introduced, or that general chemistry will have helped you a lot for (unlike, biology or math). Great instruction and modern methods mitigate this by making concepts from elsewhere more useful, but the things that students need to succeed are general study skills like time management, getting and accepting feedback, and learning from difficult problems.
(3) It has generally agreed content endpoint and criteria, unlike humanities or writing focused classes. This means that you can verify mastery on a standardized test, limiting the incentive for grade drift by universities.
(4) It occurs reasonably early in an undergrad career and does not have a lot of other input dependence. It does not require (or is even really helped by) mathematics more advanced than HS level algebra (unlike physics). Unlike many other challenging classes, students can take it early enough to realize that maybe they don't have the skills to do well in medical school. Students going into essentially any major field of study can take gen-chem 1+2 and o-chem to evaluate their prospects at the end of semester 3 (or earlier if they tested out of gen-chem), unlike say immunology or advanced biochemistry.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 2:47 PM on October 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
Can't imagine a Doctor saying, "wait, that ion is not going there".
It depends on how deeply you can afford to think about certain drugs. On a basic level, knowing when a molecule is more likely to be hydrophobic or lipophilic is necessary to make predictions. In my field, many of the names that molecules are sold under are just based on convenient marketing. Like, there are "antidepressants" that more structurally and mechanistically function as "antipsychotics" (or vice versa). Or they are in fact merely almost identical molecules, sometimes with meaningful substitutions, other times with meaningless or irrelevant substitutions that were obviously added merely to obtain a new drug/prodrug classification. Or some opioids that are really quite effective antidepressant through various familiar mechanisms. So it helps to be able to look at their shape, figure out which organic class (most, but not all, of them are organic) a drug is in, and what its downstream metabolites will be, how long they will persist, where they are likely to be metabolized, how well they will be distributed within the body, and where/likely aites of action or scarcity. Coming from orgo, there are a few basic repertoire of reactions that different sites perform (with the majority of the reactions ever learned in orgo being unnecessary). But the basic reactions permeate the body. So whereas you could spend a lot of time relearning or deriving these from first principles, that is what the first two years of med school are for. after that ordela is past, most people end up merely using heuristics, or look-up tables for different enzyme classes, etc, because it's faster. I think it would be possible to simply rely on such tables exclusively for a lot of basic care, and I think that's what a lot of mid-level education focuses upon, but having the background to be able to dig deeper, if necessary, is worthwhile, with the reservation that the way the market operates usually prevents most people in practice from using or relearning that stuff unless it becomes necessary or a journal club/paper/presentation is looming. Or some tricky edge cases that you are more likely to see in tertiary centers or in specializations.
posted by meehawl at 3:10 PM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
It depends on how deeply you can afford to think about certain drugs. On a basic level, knowing when a molecule is more likely to be hydrophobic or lipophilic is necessary to make predictions. In my field, many of the names that molecules are sold under are just based on convenient marketing. Like, there are "antidepressants" that more structurally and mechanistically function as "antipsychotics" (or vice versa). Or they are in fact merely almost identical molecules, sometimes with meaningful substitutions, other times with meaningless or irrelevant substitutions that were obviously added merely to obtain a new drug/prodrug classification. Or some opioids that are really quite effective antidepressant through various familiar mechanisms. So it helps to be able to look at their shape, figure out which organic class (most, but not all, of them are organic) a drug is in, and what its downstream metabolites will be, how long they will persist, where they are likely to be metabolized, how well they will be distributed within the body, and where/likely aites of action or scarcity. Coming from orgo, there are a few basic repertoire of reactions that different sites perform (with the majority of the reactions ever learned in orgo being unnecessary). But the basic reactions permeate the body. So whereas you could spend a lot of time relearning or deriving these from first principles, that is what the first two years of med school are for. after that ordela is past, most people end up merely using heuristics, or look-up tables for different enzyme classes, etc, because it's faster. I think it would be possible to simply rely on such tables exclusively for a lot of basic care, and I think that's what a lot of mid-level education focuses upon, but having the background to be able to dig deeper, if necessary, is worthwhile, with the reservation that the way the market operates usually prevents most people in practice from using or relearning that stuff unless it becomes necessary or a journal club/paper/presentation is looming. Or some tricky edge cases that you are more likely to see in tertiary centers or in specializations.
posted by meehawl at 3:10 PM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
Here’s what I’d like to know, while we’re talking pie in the sky improvements to how we train doctors. Why is it a graduate degree? Why can’t we make it an undergraduate degree (as it is in England) and then let medical school itself do any necessary weeding, to ensure that nobody gets weeded for irrelevant reasons? Why do we stack a bachelor’s degree worth of debt and delay on top of the expense of med school and the relatively poor compensation of residency?
posted by eirias at 4:16 PM on October 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by eirias at 4:16 PM on October 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
Now I'm wondering how kids who pass the marshmallow test do in organic chemistry.
posted by clawsoon at 5:10 PM on October 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 5:10 PM on October 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
> There is only one textbook in the WORLD that is better (I've read more than 30).
lalochezia, what's the one that's better? Or perhaps you have a different recommendation for someone who did their undergrad in physics and math, then went to gradschool in microbiology, but never filled in their chemistry?
posted by madhadron at 5:17 PM on October 9, 2022
lalochezia, what's the one that's better? Or perhaps you have a different recommendation for someone who did their undergrad in physics and math, then went to gradschool in microbiology, but never filled in their chemistry?
posted by madhadron at 5:17 PM on October 9, 2022
eirias: there are undergrad-entry med schools in the US, typically 6 years, some are 7. I know several people who've done them; they are popular in the Indian immigrant community. They vary a bit in structure, but my friends describe it as even more of a pressure cooker than the typical sequence. Asking people to commit to a 50-year career in medicine at 16 or 17 (in order to be a competitive applicant to those programs) is awfully early, and is likely to make the physician workforce even less like the general population.
In my experience as a medical educator, the strongest students are those who are career changers. If I had my druthers, 2 years in the workforce -- not as a scribe or research assistant, but the actual workforce -- rather than orgo, would be the weeder prereq.
posted by basalganglia at 5:20 PM on October 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
In my experience as a medical educator, the strongest students are those who are career changers. If I had my druthers, 2 years in the workforce -- not as a scribe or research assistant, but the actual workforce -- rather than orgo, would be the weeder prereq.
posted by basalganglia at 5:20 PM on October 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
The patient-serving workforce, basalganglia, or any job?
posted by clew at 6:24 PM on October 9, 2022
posted by clew at 6:24 PM on October 9, 2022
Here’s what I’d like to know, while we’re talking pie in the sky improvements to how we train doctors. Why is it a graduate degree? Why can’t we make it an undergraduate degree (as it is in England) and then let medical school itself do any necessary weeding, to ensure that nobody gets weeded for irrelevant reasons?
Physicians in England are also paid substantially less, though (Statista says an average of ~100K-$130K for primary care vs. $200-$260K in US). My impression is that it's also a lower-prestige profession elsewhere than it is in the US.
Paul Starr's classicThe Social Transformation of American Medicine is very good as a resource for understanding how medical training in the US got to its present state. In a nutshell, IIRC, American doctors at the close of the 19th century made a concerted effort to raise the status of their profession by (a) rebranding medical practice as inherently Scientific and Technological (so it could borrow some of the luster of other fast-developing STEM fields at the turn of the century), and (b) rebranding physicians as Brilliant Scientists, so that they could justly claim the right to absolute autonomy in their clinical judgments and remain independent practitioners in control of their own economic productivity.
I think that background makes sense of the traditional emphasis on rigorous basic-science background for American doctors: by requiring organic chemistry for med-school entrance, you're ensuring that all your doctors will also have some aptitude for scientific thinking and also demonstrating to the public that this kind of thinking is critical to success in their profession. The public needs to trust that their small-town GP could (in theory) flesh out a clinical decision by reading and comprehending relevant organic chemistry scholarship if it's needed down the road. That's what enables the doctor to demand that they respect her as an independent-minded scientist (not just some caregiver flunky obeying management directives). It's also, presumably, what justifies the doctor in collecting brilliant-scientist wages, rather than run-of-the-mill social-services caregiver salary.
I can see the case for lowering the bar/ removing educational gatekeeping, but it's naive to think it wouldn't have long-term implications for the nature of the profession. I wonder whether premeds would still push for the easy A's in Orgo if they thought it would cut their salary in half once they become doctors.
posted by Sockinian at 6:41 PM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
Physicians in England are also paid substantially less, though (Statista says an average of ~100K-$130K for primary care vs. $200-$260K in US). My impression is that it's also a lower-prestige profession elsewhere than it is in the US.
Paul Starr's classicThe Social Transformation of American Medicine is very good as a resource for understanding how medical training in the US got to its present state. In a nutshell, IIRC, American doctors at the close of the 19th century made a concerted effort to raise the status of their profession by (a) rebranding medical practice as inherently Scientific and Technological (so it could borrow some of the luster of other fast-developing STEM fields at the turn of the century), and (b) rebranding physicians as Brilliant Scientists, so that they could justly claim the right to absolute autonomy in their clinical judgments and remain independent practitioners in control of their own economic productivity.
I think that background makes sense of the traditional emphasis on rigorous basic-science background for American doctors: by requiring organic chemistry for med-school entrance, you're ensuring that all your doctors will also have some aptitude for scientific thinking and also demonstrating to the public that this kind of thinking is critical to success in their profession. The public needs to trust that their small-town GP could (in theory) flesh out a clinical decision by reading and comprehending relevant organic chemistry scholarship if it's needed down the road. That's what enables the doctor to demand that they respect her as an independent-minded scientist (not just some caregiver flunky obeying management directives). It's also, presumably, what justifies the doctor in collecting brilliant-scientist wages, rather than run-of-the-mill social-services caregiver salary.
I can see the case for lowering the bar/ removing educational gatekeeping, but it's naive to think it wouldn't have long-term implications for the nature of the profession. I wonder whether premeds would still push for the easy A's in Orgo if they thought it would cut their salary in half once they become doctors.
posted by Sockinian at 6:41 PM on October 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
Person-serving, not patient-serving. Ideally not in healthcare at all. I've worked alongside former chefs, teachers, historians, competitive swimmers, musicians, finance bros, engineers. All of whom, even the chef (to pick a notoriously high stress profession) were better adjusted and better able to cope than the average med student who is frazzled and burnt out before classes even start.
Point is, working outside medicine will demonstrate to said frazzled premeds that seriously no one gives a fork about orgo.
posted by basalganglia at 6:44 PM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Point is, working outside medicine will demonstrate to said frazzled premeds that seriously no one gives a fork about orgo.
posted by basalganglia at 6:44 PM on October 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Organic was the end of the road in chemistry for me, too.
I did well in high school chemistry (I got a 5 in the AP test, an 800 on the chemistry achievement test, won the ACS sponsored 'chemistry medal' for my HS, and got the highest score in the state for a full ride scholarship at a state technical school I had not applied to and wouldn’t have attended under any circumstances — I didn’t know what the test was for; my chemistry teacher approached me one Monday and said 'hey there’s this chemistry test being given here Friday afternoon next week, and I’m wondering how you'd do', so I took it).
When I got to college at the biggest, but not that reputable state school, the chemistry department had awarded me 6 semester hours of credit for my AP class, all 6 for the lecture and none for the lab, which was a joke because my AP class met for two hours a day, and devoted a full hour every day to experiments carried out by the students. The class had a grand total of eight students and was taught by a PhD in his late 30s who hadn’t liked working in industry. We did twice as many experiments as the students in Chem 101. So my first chemistry course at university was Organic Chemistry.
Back in those days the one orgo book to rule them all was Morrison and Boyd, but the class was using an equally thick book in an attractive light blue cloth binding by some guy named Chrystal. I already had a copy of Morrison and Boyd I’d bought at the Salvation Army, and I bought a copy of Chrystal at the campus bookstore before the first class. It was terrible. The prose style was muddy, the illustrations were scant and cramped, and it didn’t have half as many problems as M&B.
After the first lecture section I went to the front of the class, waited my turn to talk to the prof, and asked him why we were using this terrible book instead of M&B. Because Chrystal was a senior professor in the department, he said. OK then, I thought.
The next day I went to the first lab section and was smacked in the face by an overpowering odor of acetone (with overtones of xylene, maybe) the moment I stepped in the door. And the glassware was old, so old that black rubber cork connectors were as common in reaction vessels and distillation apparatus as ground glass, for example.
That evening after dinner, I walked over to the large recently remodeled Student Center to look for anybody I might have known in jr. high or grade school, which I attended in a different city than high school, and as I was sitting at a table in a cafeteria area, my lab TA, named 'Turk' (he hadn’t offered us any further designation), walked in and went from table to table which held remains of people's dinners waiting to be bussed, eating the leftover potato chips and French fries on the plastic trays. I watched him visit ten booths along one wall before I turned away.
The next lecture class the following day, I waited for the professor with the forms for him to sign so I could drop the class, and never set foot in the Chemistry building again.
posted by jamjam at 6:46 PM on October 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
I did well in high school chemistry (I got a 5 in the AP test, an 800 on the chemistry achievement test, won the ACS sponsored 'chemistry medal' for my HS, and got the highest score in the state for a full ride scholarship at a state technical school I had not applied to and wouldn’t have attended under any circumstances — I didn’t know what the test was for; my chemistry teacher approached me one Monday and said 'hey there’s this chemistry test being given here Friday afternoon next week, and I’m wondering how you'd do', so I took it).
When I got to college at the biggest, but not that reputable state school, the chemistry department had awarded me 6 semester hours of credit for my AP class, all 6 for the lecture and none for the lab, which was a joke because my AP class met for two hours a day, and devoted a full hour every day to experiments carried out by the students. The class had a grand total of eight students and was taught by a PhD in his late 30s who hadn’t liked working in industry. We did twice as many experiments as the students in Chem 101. So my first chemistry course at university was Organic Chemistry.
Back in those days the one orgo book to rule them all was Morrison and Boyd, but the class was using an equally thick book in an attractive light blue cloth binding by some guy named Chrystal. I already had a copy of Morrison and Boyd I’d bought at the Salvation Army, and I bought a copy of Chrystal at the campus bookstore before the first class. It was terrible. The prose style was muddy, the illustrations were scant and cramped, and it didn’t have half as many problems as M&B.
After the first lecture section I went to the front of the class, waited my turn to talk to the prof, and asked him why we were using this terrible book instead of M&B. Because Chrystal was a senior professor in the department, he said. OK then, I thought.
The next day I went to the first lab section and was smacked in the face by an overpowering odor of acetone (with overtones of xylene, maybe) the moment I stepped in the door. And the glassware was old, so old that black rubber cork connectors were as common in reaction vessels and distillation apparatus as ground glass, for example.
That evening after dinner, I walked over to the large recently remodeled Student Center to look for anybody I might have known in jr. high or grade school, which I attended in a different city than high school, and as I was sitting at a table in a cafeteria area, my lab TA, named 'Turk' (he hadn’t offered us any further designation), walked in and went from table to table which held remains of people's dinners waiting to be bussed, eating the leftover potato chips and French fries on the plastic trays. I watched him visit ten booths along one wall before I turned away.
The next lecture class the following day, I waited for the professor with the forms for him to sign so I could drop the class, and never set foot in the Chemistry building again.
posted by jamjam at 6:46 PM on October 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
> Anyone have a link for this?
People are referencing this tweet. It's a bit ambiguous in context whether he is alleged to have actually named the lowest scoring students or not. (But if accurate, it's a shitty thing to do either way, just not necessarily a FERPA violation or something if the student in question wasn't actually identifiable by others.)
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 7:21 PM on October 9, 2022
People are referencing this tweet. It's a bit ambiguous in context whether he is alleged to have actually named the lowest scoring students or not. (But if accurate, it's a shitty thing to do either way, just not necessarily a FERPA violation or something if the student in question wasn't actually identifiable by others.)
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 7:21 PM on October 9, 2022
Here, one goes straight to med school, the sorting mechanism is HS grades, but one gets extra points for relevant experience. So most students have one or two years of life experience before entry. In HS, you have to have had math at the highest level. (It's different from when I was a student, where the high school had a kind of majors. I am Math/Bio, and I did have organic chemistry). But you can take the math after graduating from HS, and for some that is smarter. A doctor will be about 30 when they graduate, with no debt.
I don't think it would work in the US, where the high schools are less elitist than here.
As to the quality of doctors in this system, it is impossible to compare. But anecdotally, som Danish doctors go to the US for the much bigger paycheck, and they are absolutely competitive, wether they go into practice or research.
posted by mumimor at 12:48 AM on October 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't think it would work in the US, where the high schools are less elitist than here.
As to the quality of doctors in this system, it is impossible to compare. But anecdotally, som Danish doctors go to the US for the much bigger paycheck, and they are absolutely competitive, wether they go into practice or research.
posted by mumimor at 12:48 AM on October 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't remember the name, but there's a youtuber who talks about diagnosing problems-- sometimes emergencies where the patient is unable to say what might have caused the problem-- and he frequently cites using chemistry as part of finding out what's going wrong and what might help.
I have no idea how common this approach is. It sounds simpler than organic chemistry, and maybe Medical Chemistry might be more relevant.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:56 AM on October 10, 2022
I have no idea how common this approach is. It sounds simpler than organic chemistry, and maybe Medical Chemistry might be more relevant.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:56 AM on October 10, 2022
But anecdotally, som Danish doctors go to the US for the much bigger paycheck, and they are absolutely competitive, wether they go into practice or research.
I once suggested that non-US healthcare systems might be more socialist and less greedy than the US system because of the fact that the US acts as a magnet for all the doctors from around the world who want to be greedy and make as much money as possible, and I was told that, no, all of the immigrant doctors are given the shittiest jobs at the bottom of the ladder and the higher-paying jobs all go to Americans. I'm glad to have at least one example of in support of my half-baked theory. "But the Danes, you see..."
posted by clawsoon at 6:05 AM on October 10, 2022
I once suggested that non-US healthcare systems might be more socialist and less greedy than the US system because of the fact that the US acts as a magnet for all the doctors from around the world who want to be greedy and make as much money as possible, and I was told that, no, all of the immigrant doctors are given the shittiest jobs at the bottom of the ladder and the higher-paying jobs all go to Americans. I'm glad to have at least one example of in support of my half-baked theory. "But the Danes, you see..."
posted by clawsoon at 6:05 AM on October 10, 2022
As a physician, I have to say that the idea of a course to weed out college students who won’t make good physicians is appealing. Organic chemistry is a reasonable suggestion, but is it the best? There is a certain amount of physics in medicine; for example turbulent flow produces wheezing in asthmatics and heart murmurs. So perhaps physics would be a good choice. And there are a lot of mathematical formulas (some pretty complex) in medicine; also, understanding statistics is essential for interpreting the medical literature. So calculus might be a good weed-out course. But medicine isn’t just about hard science. Communication is an essential skill, so English should be made difficult enough to weed out poor physician candidates. Or maybe a foreign language; most medical practices care for a pretty diverse group of patients, some from other countries. We have all heard of the all to common ethical lapses that happen in medicine; clearly advanced philosophy training should be required of potential physicians. Anything less than an “A” and you are out of the running for med school. Speaking of ethics, the history of medicine is full of both great discoveries and horrible mistakes. Perhaps history is another course that can be used to weed out premed students.
Or perhaps, instead of looking for ways to narrow the pool of potential physicians, educators should be trying to attract intelligent, curious, and well-rounded people to the medical field. Every college student (every person!) has strengths and weaknesses, and there are enough varied careers in medicine that all sorts of people can have a successful career, regardless of their grades in organic chemistry.
posted by TedW at 6:20 AM on October 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
Or perhaps, instead of looking for ways to narrow the pool of potential physicians, educators should be trying to attract intelligent, curious, and well-rounded people to the medical field. Every college student (every person!) has strengths and weaknesses, and there are enough varied careers in medicine that all sorts of people can have a successful career, regardless of their grades in organic chemistry.
posted by TedW at 6:20 AM on October 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
…I was told that, no, all of the immigrant doctors are given the shittiest jobs at the bottom of the ladder and the higher-paying jobs all go to Americans.
There are plenty of physicians from outside the US in my anesthesia department, and anesthesiology is generally considered one of the high pay/low hours “lifestyle specialties.” (Although that is debatable, especially in a tertiary care center with an active trauma service.) As far as the rest of your theory goes, my personal observation is that relatively few immigrant physicians are from other developed nations and those that are generally came because of family ties or other non-economic reasons. More common are those that are coming from less wealthy nations (as an example of the brain drain that is cited in many fields) or from nations with a lot of political instability, such as Venezuela.
posted by TedW at 6:32 AM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
There are plenty of physicians from outside the US in my anesthesia department, and anesthesiology is generally considered one of the high pay/low hours “lifestyle specialties.” (Although that is debatable, especially in a tertiary care center with an active trauma service.) As far as the rest of your theory goes, my personal observation is that relatively few immigrant physicians are from other developed nations and those that are generally came because of family ties or other non-economic reasons. More common are those that are coming from less wealthy nations (as an example of the brain drain that is cited in many fields) or from nations with a lot of political instability, such as Venezuela.
posted by TedW at 6:32 AM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
In this day and age, where physicians have had their profession stolen out from under them by the insurance companies, maybe Econ 101 would be a good weeder course. Or perhaps a history of labor.
posted by whuppy at 6:47 AM on October 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by whuppy at 6:47 AM on October 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
I took orgo from Mait freshman year at Princeton, thinking that because I placed into it, I'd enjoy taking it as an elective.
Probably not my smartest move.
I managed to squeak out a D. The premeds in the class all worked together, making sure they had everything memorized and ready for the tests, while I actually believed Mait when he claimed you could learn orgo from first principles - reasoning out what reactions would occur from molecular orbital theory. I should have memorized things instead! (And maybe not stayed up so many nights playing D&D instead of studying) But I did learn a lot that I would carry with me in my career. And that Maitland Jones really liked salmon colored chalk.
As for Mait, he was beloved of many. There was a tradition of students invading one of his lectures each year and taking him hostage. My year only involved water guns and a pie in the face.
One year, students supposedly rappelled down from the balcony in tactical gear.
Yes, his grading was too hard. And he was a more than a little insufferable (not surprising considering his position). But he did have a passion for teaching, and his lectures were some of the best I've ever seen.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:49 AM on October 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
Probably not my smartest move.
I managed to squeak out a D. The premeds in the class all worked together, making sure they had everything memorized and ready for the tests, while I actually believed Mait when he claimed you could learn orgo from first principles - reasoning out what reactions would occur from molecular orbital theory. I should have memorized things instead! (And maybe not stayed up so many nights playing D&D instead of studying) But I did learn a lot that I would carry with me in my career. And that Maitland Jones really liked salmon colored chalk.
As for Mait, he was beloved of many. There was a tradition of students invading one of his lectures each year and taking him hostage. My year only involved water guns and a pie in the face.
One year, students supposedly rappelled down from the balcony in tactical gear.
Yes, his grading was too hard. And he was a more than a little insufferable (not surprising considering his position). But he did have a passion for teaching, and his lectures were some of the best I've ever seen.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:49 AM on October 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
Just as a reminder: weed out courses for pre-med students are often required courses for other majors. I’m so damn sick of the emphasis placed on the needs of the pre-med students and the corresponding not giving a F about people actually doing a major because it is what they want to do.
So no, Econ wouldn’t be helpful
Nor would a general physics course, a general maths course, a general biology course, a general chemistry course, etc.
Can’t there just be a course called pre-med requirement course that is relevant to medicine?
posted by sciencegeek at 7:32 AM on October 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
So no, Econ wouldn’t be helpful
Nor would a general physics course, a general maths course, a general biology course, a general chemistry course, etc.
Can’t there just be a course called pre-med requirement course that is relevant to medicine?
posted by sciencegeek at 7:32 AM on October 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
I don't have much to add here, but whoever assigned 1 faculty + 2 TAs to 575 students really failed those students. Literally and figuratively.
posted by Dashy at 7:34 AM on October 10, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by Dashy at 7:34 AM on October 10, 2022 [10 favorites]
I've seen this both ways.
I had one professor who was terrible and everyone (including the rest of the faculty) knew it. He was low energy, wasn't particularly responsive to students asking for help, was extremely picky over exams, didn't seem to understand how the subject had changed in the past three decades, and had a severe case of "kids these days". Everyone knew he was well past retirement and was only staying on (he had tenure) because it helped the sales of the textbook he had written. He was also the kind of guy who on the first day of class would offer a full letter-grade improvement on an exam to anyone who found a mistake in his textbook while bragging that it's been three editions since anyone has.
I also had another professor (in the same department) who was extremely tough but who was much better at respecting the students. He was just as "old school" as the other guy, but he'd toss students a break every now and then and didn't take things out personally on the class. He was patient and always available during office hours. There were still plenty of people who hated him, but it was much harder for students to cite any reason other than "he's tough and I didn't get a good grade".
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:20 AM on October 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
I had one professor who was terrible and everyone (including the rest of the faculty) knew it. He was low energy, wasn't particularly responsive to students asking for help, was extremely picky over exams, didn't seem to understand how the subject had changed in the past three decades, and had a severe case of "kids these days". Everyone knew he was well past retirement and was only staying on (he had tenure) because it helped the sales of the textbook he had written. He was also the kind of guy who on the first day of class would offer a full letter-grade improvement on an exam to anyone who found a mistake in his textbook while bragging that it's been three editions since anyone has.
I also had another professor (in the same department) who was extremely tough but who was much better at respecting the students. He was just as "old school" as the other guy, but he'd toss students a break every now and then and didn't take things out personally on the class. He was patient and always available during office hours. There were still plenty of people who hated him, but it was much harder for students to cite any reason other than "he's tough and I didn't get a good grade".
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:20 AM on October 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
If he or his brother still have a podcast, I'm sure Bret Weinstein is chomping at the bit to talk to Maitland.
posted by shenkerism at 9:06 AM on October 10, 2022
posted by shenkerism at 9:06 AM on October 10, 2022
A speech that a former Harvard Medical School dean pointed out is utter bullshit. Given that he's the one who actually worked on teaching doctors, I'm going to take his assessment on the need for o-chem for premed students.
That's nice but meanwhile HMS continues to have it on the prereq list, so where are we with that assessment then? I don't doubt that learning organic chemistry is hardly a sensible prerequisite to being a doctor nor that the idea of "weed out" courses is nonsense but apparently HMS itself hasn't come to that conclusion.
As someone who got not-asked-back after a semester as an adjunct at CUNY because I pushed back against them forcing my online-only students to have to come on campus to take their finals in person during a major COVID spike, I gotta say I don't feel super bad for someone who got let go for being actively shitty to particular students & not being willing to adapt to online teaching. I'm proud I stood up for my students even though it sucked for me & I have no respect for teachers who see their job as being there to weed out the undesirables or any other totally inequitable bullshit.
I'm glad that you agree with the principle of the casualisation of academic labour, please enjoy the rest of your career which no doubt won't be at all affected by that phenomenon.
posted by atrazine at 9:20 AM on October 10, 2022
That's nice but meanwhile HMS continues to have it on the prereq list, so where are we with that assessment then? I don't doubt that learning organic chemistry is hardly a sensible prerequisite to being a doctor nor that the idea of "weed out" courses is nonsense but apparently HMS itself hasn't come to that conclusion.
As someone who got not-asked-back after a semester as an adjunct at CUNY because I pushed back against them forcing my online-only students to have to come on campus to take their finals in person during a major COVID spike, I gotta say I don't feel super bad for someone who got let go for being actively shitty to particular students & not being willing to adapt to online teaching. I'm proud I stood up for my students even though it sucked for me & I have no respect for teachers who see their job as being there to weed out the undesirables or any other totally inequitable bullshit.
I'm glad that you agree with the principle of the casualisation of academic labour, please enjoy the rest of your career which no doubt won't be at all affected by that phenomenon.
posted by atrazine at 9:20 AM on October 10, 2022
Can’t there just be a course called pre-med requirement course that is relevant to medicine?
How about "Women, Minorities and Disabled persons studies: How not to dismiss your patient's concerns because they are Black, or Female, or Overweight , or experiencing Chronic Pain". Make that the weed out class and maybe we'd have less dismissive doctors. Bet 90% of them would get more use of it day to day than organic chemistery.
posted by Mitheral at 10:28 AM on October 10, 2022 [26 favorites]
How about "Women, Minorities and Disabled persons studies: How not to dismiss your patient's concerns because they are Black, or Female, or Overweight , or experiencing Chronic Pain". Make that the weed out class and maybe we'd have less dismissive doctors. Bet 90% of them would get more use of it day to day than organic chemistery.
posted by Mitheral at 10:28 AM on October 10, 2022 [26 favorites]
Can’t there just be a course called pre-med requirement course that is relevant to medicine?
FWIW, at my (large, public) undergrad this was kind of done. There was a distinct intro sequence in chemistry, biology, and physics for the BS in each. These were also rigorous and might be tough if you had no background from HS or mathematical pre-preqs. Non-majors looking for a general education requirement had to pick their poison: the bulk class with premeds or the major class where they expect you to think and know things. I don't know how common that strategy is.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 11:34 AM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
FWIW, at my (large, public) undergrad this was kind of done. There was a distinct intro sequence in chemistry, biology, and physics for the BS in each. These were also rigorous and might be tough if you had no background from HS or mathematical pre-preqs. Non-majors looking for a general education requirement had to pick their poison: the bulk class with premeds or the major class where they expect you to think and know things. I don't know how common that strategy is.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 11:34 AM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm glad that you agree with the principle of the casualisation of academic labour, please enjoy the rest of your career which no doubt won't be at all affected by that phenomenon.
Oh wow, you got me! Fun fact, I actually can be against the casualization of my profession and at the same time against bad practitioners who see teaching "weed-out"s as acceptable practice. As an adjunct, I've been let go for: being visibly queer, being too helpful to students in office hours (which is seen as not rigorous enough), and pushing back against departmental polices that demonstrably put my students' health in danger. Somehow these don't rise to the level of national news but a teacher who literally did zero to adapt to a new teaching environment except fuck his students over does.
posted by augustimagination at 12:52 PM on October 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
Oh wow, you got me! Fun fact, I actually can be against the casualization of my profession and at the same time against bad practitioners who see teaching "weed-out"s as acceptable practice. As an adjunct, I've been let go for: being visibly queer, being too helpful to students in office hours (which is seen as not rigorous enough), and pushing back against departmental polices that demonstrably put my students' health in danger. Somehow these don't rise to the level of national news but a teacher who literally did zero to adapt to a new teaching environment except fuck his students over does.
posted by augustimagination at 12:52 PM on October 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
I'm glad that you agree with the principle of the casualisation of academic labour...
Yeah no, any real adjunct has been (technically not) fired like this multiple times. I was lucky, in a sense, because my biggest indignity to date happened while I was still a grad student. A local extension division cancelled my class but didn't inform me about it. I prepped all week for session two, showed up, set everything up and....no one came! Yet, while clearly "unfair," this incident did not launch 100 thinkpieces on whether or not Tauro College could eat a bag of dicks.
I would wager that 9 out of 10 adjuncts see Maitland as a privileged whiner. I sure do.
posted by anhedonic at 1:25 PM on October 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
Yeah no, any real adjunct has been (technically not) fired like this multiple times. I was lucky, in a sense, because my biggest indignity to date happened while I was still a grad student. A local extension division cancelled my class but didn't inform me about it. I prepped all week for session two, showed up, set everything up and....no one came! Yet, while clearly "unfair," this incident did not launch 100 thinkpieces on whether or not Tauro College could eat a bag of dicks.
I would wager that 9 out of 10 adjuncts see Maitland as a privileged whiner. I sure do.
posted by anhedonic at 1:25 PM on October 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
Most regular adjuncts know that they are not in the position to taunt the students, because adjuncting means you are extremely replaceable. Most strive for strong evals.
Surely the students who signed on to the petition assumed he had tenure, which is why they say they "didn't expect him to get fired." They don't understand the phenomenon of retired professors who continue to work.
Maybe I have a dark sense of humor, but I cannot help but laugh from the irony of this. It sounds like students circulated the petition about Professor Jones because they assumed that nobody that dickish could be anything other than an unfireable tenured professor. I preface this by stating that, if I reach 80 years old and I had to interact with hundreds of students in their late teens and early twenties, I might turn out to be a total dick.
On the other hand, with the guy acting like that, what inference do you think the students were going to make? He couldn't be less out of Central Casting than if he were John Houseman in the Paper Chase. He looks like a guy who got tenured in the middle of the Johnson Administration & he has the bearing of a Princeton professor, because he was one. If that leads a less academically sophisticated NYU undergrad to assume he is an unfireable fossil, can you blame them?
posted by jonp72 at 6:15 PM on October 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
Surely the students who signed on to the petition assumed he had tenure, which is why they say they "didn't expect him to get fired." They don't understand the phenomenon of retired professors who continue to work.
Maybe I have a dark sense of humor, but I cannot help but laugh from the irony of this. It sounds like students circulated the petition about Professor Jones because they assumed that nobody that dickish could be anything other than an unfireable tenured professor. I preface this by stating that, if I reach 80 years old and I had to interact with hundreds of students in their late teens and early twenties, I might turn out to be a total dick.
On the other hand, with the guy acting like that, what inference do you think the students were going to make? He couldn't be less out of Central Casting than if he were John Houseman in the Paper Chase. He looks like a guy who got tenured in the middle of the Johnson Administration & he has the bearing of a Princeton professor, because he was one. If that leads a less academically sophisticated NYU undergrad to assume he is an unfireable fossil, can you blame them?
posted by jonp72 at 6:15 PM on October 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
Possibly NYU students come from a different background that includes greater familiarity with how academic jobs work, but in my experience, many students do not have the first clue what tenure is; what the differences are between a tenured faculty member, a pre-tenure but tenure-track faculty member, or an adjunct; how university complaint or disciplinary systems work (especially for faculty, but also for students); or how instructors get hired or fired.
posted by eviemath at 7:03 PM on October 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 7:03 PM on October 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
I would wager that 9 out of 10 adjuncts see Maitland as a privileged whiner. I sure do.
The category of adjunct professor was created specifically for those privileged people who could be shitcanned and would just shrug it off and go back to what they were doing prior to being hired as adjuncts.
posted by ocschwar at 6:34 PM on October 11, 2022
The category of adjunct professor was created specifically for those privileged people who could be shitcanned and would just shrug it off and go back to what they were doing prior to being hired as adjuncts.
posted by ocschwar at 6:34 PM on October 11, 2022
The numbers are a refutation to a claim that he had a large number of withdrawals 19 withdrew rather than taking a failing grade. How many people withdrew before failing though?
posted by Mitheral at 5:20 AM on October 12, 2022
posted by Mitheral at 5:20 AM on October 12, 2022
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Both of these charges can be true.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:09 PM on October 8, 2022 [52 favorites]