Earlier this month I wrote about organic chemistry professor Maitland Jones. Jones, who is now 84-years-old taught at Princeton until 2007 and then retired and became an adjunct professor at NYU. He’s considered one of the leading teachers in the field and his textbook on organic chem is now in its 5th edition. But his class is not easy. In fact, it had become known as a weed out class for students who wanted to go into medicine. But last spring a group of his students revolted.

…as the campus emerged from pandemic restrictions, 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him.

Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores…

“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,” the petition said…

“We urge you to realize,” the petition said, “that a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students’ learning and well-being a priority and reflects poorly on the chemistry department as well as the institution as a whole.”

NYU agreed to let students retroactively withdraw from the class so a low grade wouldn’t be held against them. Dr. Jones was eventually fired but he filed a grievance over that decision and said he’d actually been reducing the difficulty of his exams. From his perspective, some of his students had completely forgotten how to study and the problem got noticeably worse during the pandemic.

Today the NY Times published a follow up piece in which they interviewed a bunch of professors and students about what had changed in higher ed in the last few years. The story uses Dr. Jones firing as a jumping off point for questions about whether students have become too entitled or professors have become too stuck in their ways. As I read it, there’s a pretty clear agreement among many of the respondents that the students have in fact become more demanding of professors and less of themselves. From a student…

I’m a sophomore at a private university. Unnecessary weed-out classes that usually aren’t even important to your major should be completely removed from curriculums or taught in a different way. Students who don’t have the means to support themselves academically should not be weeded out. Young people have a stronger voice now and the petition at N.Y.U. shined a light on this longstanding issue. — Charles Booth, 19, Hoboken, N.J.

No offense to Charles, but I don’t think organic chemistry is unimportant to your major if you’re hoping to be a medical doctor. As for students who don’t “have the means to support themselves academically” I’m not sure what this means. Is he saying students who fail tough classes? If so, what’s the point of having grades or tests at all? If everyone just gets a pass and no one is weeded out, couldn’t that result in some really unprepared college graduates who actually can’t do the kind of work their degree suggests they can? From a former professor:

I taught digital media management to postgraduates at a private university, and over the last few years students stopped wanting to be educated and became buyers of credentials. That evolution created sides in a conflict: students and the administrators who collect their tuition on one side, faculty and our professional obsessions on the other.

Ultimately, I could not accept the mismatch of priorities. I left academia because of the changes I perceived in students and the administration that pandered to them.

I think that sort of matches with the previous comment from Charlies, i.e. it doesn’t matter if students can support themselves academically what matters is that they get the degree they paid for regardless of how they perform. Another professor:

I have extensive experience teaching undergraduate, graduate and medical students in both seminar and large lecture settings at a private university. I used the Socratic method, attempting to gently lead the students through the process of problem solving. I explained at the beginning that it was meant as a dialogue, not a harassment. About 15 years ago, I started seeing undergraduate students become resistant to this challenge. Ten years ago this discomfort had filtered up to the graduate and medical students. Now, questioning students in front of their peers is more or less considered unacceptable. It makes them “uncomfortable.” I consider myself a flexible, supportive instructor, sensitive to the needs of my students. I do not believe in so-called weed-out courses. I believe in learning. But part of this process is becoming adept at problem solving under challenging conditions. — Barry Goldstein, 70, Westport, N.Y.

No one can be uncomfortable. The classroom has to be a safe space even from learning in real time. Finally, this one is interesting. It comes from a student and starts out as a criticism of some professors but ends with what I think was meant to be a further criticism of stodgy professors but it actually comes across as an embarrassing admission about the students.

I am an undergraduate at a private university widely regarded for having difficult professors and curriculums. I think many professors at research universities tend to focus less on their teaching and more on publishing. I also find that professors are often resistant to changing their teaching styles when something isn’t working because for many, it doesn’t seem to be a priority for them.

In a post-Covid academic climate many of my peers, including myself, are just not accustomed to the kind of effort that has been expected for decades in pre-med and other similar weed-out courses. — Sam Nichols, 20, Ithaca, N.Y.

Again, I think he was trying to say that in the post-Covid world the kids just shouldn’t be expected to meet the expectations of previous generations. But why not exactly? If not now, when will it be okay to demand a lot of effort from those students?

Read the whole thing for yourself.