Out of curiosity, wasn’t NYU one of the universities that experimented with making the SAT optional, and this undergrad cohort would be the first (or one of the first) that is reaching Organic Chemistry that didn’t have to submit SAT scores to matriculate in the first place?
NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
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Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Here's the unfortunate rub with this particular class--organic chemistry is a requisite for medical school and probably shouldn't be" I've not studied medicine but I've some organic chemistry knowledge thus I've come across this bane of contention previously from others. It doesn't take long for organic chemistry to get bogged down in technical details that I reckon wouldn't be needed by most medical professionals.…
I appreciate your thoughtful response. Some of the concepts you mentioned, such as Gibbs free energy, are covered in intro physics, intro biology, and biochemistry courses that are also required as a physician. I believe one biochemistry class as an undergrad and one year of biochemistry instruction in the first 2 years of medical school. A simplified organic chemistry course could cover the theory of SN1/SN2 attacks…
My school had weed out classes in my program, but it had nothing to do with graduate admissions or competitive rankings.
The point was that it's better to have a student struggle and make adjustments earlier rather than later in their education. Regardless if that adjustment is "spend more time studying" or "change from STEM to something easier", it's better for it to happen in a students first year than fourth year in college.
The system seemed to work well to me. Lots of smart kids who didn't have to work very hard in high school learned early that they were going to have to work harder in college. Other kids realized they were better changing majors. Everyone who was still in the program their junior year had the confidence that they could graduate.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is stupid because who cares if you get it in one or ten tries? Allowing retaken classes to replace old grades should be the standard.
Doctors don't get do-overs. Coming up in a culture of "get this right the first time" makes all kinds of sense for a medical training track.
No it doesn't, what? How do you think learning works? I couldn't remember what 7 times 6 was on my 4th grade test and now it's impossible for me to know it. I get that it's hard to see because it's so normalized but it's ridiculous that our education system is based on fixed time intervals. God help someone who needs to take a little more time on the material before mastering it, guess you just fail. And when we create a system that punishes anything less than perfect forever we end up selecting good test takers rather than good doctors.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#74"And how hard should organic chemistry be anyway?" Heaven forbid, it should be as hard as is necessary to achieve the stated outcome. If someone does a course in organic synthesis and graduates from that course then a company hiring the person expects him or her to be able to synthesize chemicals to the extent or level that the course coverd. Graduates need to know what they're taught and companies expect their prosp…
I completed medical school back in 2012. Here's the unfortunate rub with this particular class--organic chemistry is a requisite for medical school and probably shouldn't be. The class is mostly pre-med students and very few chemistry majors. It seems that once upon a time some administrators decided that students should complete 2 years of chemistry and organic chemistry happened to be the most common second year co…
Maybe there should be an entire pre-med degree. Or at least half of it, fully focused on the subject. Some other countries just straight up admit to med-school and those who don't pass examinations end up doing things like chemistry, and rightfully treated as such students.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#75This is how the united states fails - our education institutions fail to hold the bar and let the pillars of real education turn to sand. Admittedly, initially in college I was a horrible student. But I got better, admittedly after re-taking a few classes. It cost me, but I learned from it. Not just maths but the lesson of having to grind and struggle to get better at something when it felt like I sucked and had zero…
Exactly. I see a lot of people on HN are often bashing European public universities, but advantage of those universities is that you are essentially judged by a third party which does not have any monetary reason to let you pass. You either know, or you are kicked from exams.
Depending on funding system they have quite a lot reasons to pass people. Namely that they are also paid for each graduate by state.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#76As a recent grad, this doesn't at all seem surprising I had a class where literally half of the people in it cheated on the autograded assignments and got caught. Then after getting caught a bunch of them cheated again by just refactoring what they already wrote There were two to three other classes where a group of 10-20 people banded together and started insisting out of nowhere that the class was "too difficult".…
When I was in college, in the 80s, some professors and courses had campus-wide reputations for difficulty. Of one the student course review said "if you take Professor X you'll learn more from your B- than you will from any other class you take". It turned out that these were generally the most interesting and rewarding courses, and these professors the ones most concerned about their students learning. They were pre…
Absolutely. And one of those classes was O-CHEM.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly, I'm not fully cognizant of all the details in this case so I can only comment in general terms and obviously they can be wrong if I've not access to sufficient information. It's quite a while since I was at university and back then there would have been very little chance of a professor being fired that easy or on those grounds. That said, back then, the system was very fair. Students were treated with respe…
I also don't mean to make this so big as to have you throw up your hands at it--that reaction is how systems fail. There is still very little chance of tenured professors being fired. This exception occurs notably in the case of a longtime, but untenured instructor. When you say the system should be fair and flexible, it really is as easy as giving students a chance to do better next time. If every student fails the…
"...students have no recourse against their colleges, the companies they aspire to move into, or the federal government barring declaration of bankruptcy on their loans."
I've quoted all that because each part is relevant.
1. Students had no recouse against the uni or colleges in my time either, it's just the system was fair and worked reasonably well. If the uni or colleges clamped down because you'd screwed up big-time then you could do nothing about it.
2. If you had a cadetship with a company etc. then you were essentially in it's hands, you had no recourse against it but there were rules as to how those arrangements were managed.
3. When I first went to university, fees were trivial when compared with today (I recall having to pay a little over $400. Some years later, the government made fees free and one got there solely on one's merit (there was no buying one's way in). Two decades later the government reversed the decision and the fees went up to tens of thousands of dollars overnight and students became indebted. That fucked the system up big-time.
4. My university time wasn't all plain sailing, there were many ups and downs but they were my fault or related to my situation, they were not the fault of the university.
5. The single biggest difference was that back then people didn't have the sense of entitlement that they do have today. One's situation was what one made it, no one owed one a living and one was responsible for oneself. One either put up with life or one changed it. As that was the accepted norm there was far less trouble and volatility associated with education back then as compared to now.
Also, it was not the norm for everyone to go to university, only a small percentage of the population did so.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Here's the unfortunate rub with this particular class--organic chemistry is a requisite for medical school and probably shouldn't be" I've not studied medicine but I've some organic chemistry knowledge thus I've come across this bane of contention previously from others. It doesn't take long for organic chemistry to get bogged down in technical details that I reckon wouldn't be needed by most medical professionals.…
I appreciate your effort in this post. I am a practicing physician and also a person who majored in biochemistry, rather than the more pre-med focused biology/chemistry major offered at my institution. My opinion is that organic chemistry is a great window into the complexity of biologic chemistry that happens to be the foundation of medicine. Is it necessary for all physicians to peer through this window in order to…
The position you've put about medicine is essentially as I've come to understand it having viewed it from the outside.
Had I wanted to do medicine I've no doubt that I'd have thought twice about it given the long and tenacious path I'd have had to have taken to get there. My interests were always in basic science and engineering, so I was never in the position of having to make those awkward decisions.
That said, it wasn't a completely black and white process, at one stage I started pharmacy but changed my mind, that may be obvious from my earlier comments.
I've no doubt that filtering is needed to weed out the less motivated but as I've said elsewhere, I've concerns about how it's done. If good people are weeded out because of say their circumstances then society loses the benefit of their input.
My opinion about organic chemistry is that it is a tremendous subject and I have an abiding interest in it. I think this puts me in a good position to appreciate the dilemma medical people face when confronted with the subject. As you know it can get complicated quickly and getting to grips with it can take a lot of work and time—time that many cannot afford to commit.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also don't mean to make this so big as to have you throw up your hands at it--that reaction is how systems fail. There is still very little chance of tenured professors being fired. This exception occurs notably in the case of a longtime, but untenured instructor. When you say the system should be fair and flexible, it really is as easy as giving students a chance to do better next time. If every student fails the…
"...students have no recourse against their colleges, the companies they aspire to move into, or the federal government barring declaration of bankruptcy on their loans." I've quoted all that because each part is relevant. 1. Students had no recouse against the uni or colleges in my time either, it's just the system was fair and worked reasonably well. If the uni or colleges clamped down because you'd screwed up big-…
I think the relative reward for completing higher education in any field was greater than today. Being college educated provided such a clear advantage that it was a no brainer to put up with some academic arrogance.
Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to be a pervasive attitude. Today a group of my colleagues received their grades on a linear algebra test. The class average was below the failing mark. One of my acquaintances remarked: "The professor is going to have to do something about these grades, they can't fail the whole class!" Maybe it's the class that should do something about the grades...
It is trivially simple for an educator(edit: typo) to write a test that every student fails, curve the grades into a normal distribution, and place blame on students while showing a normal distribution of outcomes to administration. Do you think that practice produces better learning?
Damn near fifty years ago, I had a multivariate calculus teacher who thought it was amusing to provide tests where the curve peaked about 49%. I was lazy and neglectful of doing the homework problems, so I don't blame him for my own performance. But it didn't seem like a good way to run a class.
I should say that he did not curve on 50% and grade on 90%: I think that a 50% was probably a B- or a C. But it was a while ago.