Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 110 posts

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#81

Post by nh23423fefe »

forgetbook wrote: post #31
nh23423fefe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool nobody needs to learn algebra because no one uses it. Learning itself has no value, sends no signal. Gates are bad let everyone in. Struggling is bad and an indication that something in the world should change.

Would you evaluate entrance to your roofing company based on a worker's ability to solder circuit boards?

You are confusing the necessary with the sufficient and ignoring that competence is correlated across diverse tasks.

So yes, I could hire someone based only on seeing them perform at a high level in an unrelated task.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#82

Post by JamesBarney »

cannaceo wrote: post #37
hilbert42 wrote: post #21

"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…

I always thought the point of organic chemistry was to be a weed out course for med students.

Most doctors I know don't know jack shit about organic chemistry. They're operating at a level of abstraction much much higher.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#83

Post by forgetbook »

hilbert42 wrote: post #77
forgetbook wrote: post #69

Earlier 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-…

2 & 3] So, the students now bear the risk/burden of their training costs, where in the past they were heavily subsidized by the University capping costs ($400), the fed paying what remained (made fees free), and in some cases the company taking on an obligation to hire (cadetship).

5] Spot the strawman. How are students entitled when they are the ones paying tuition and shouldering risk of failure, while institutions in return offer no obligation to train (university), no obligation to hire (company), and no escape from debt (fed)?

Again, I'm glad your experience worked out well, and I'm glad we agree that the conditions students operate in today are materially different. You certainly have the option of throwing up your hands at the entitlement of the youths, but it seems to me that the entitlement here is on the part of institutions that now expect access to a highly trained workforce with no part in supporting the training.

If your goal is that only a small percentage of the population be highly competent in their field, then by all means support the norm that only a small percentage of the population be supported in training.

(edit: additional comments below)

I'd like to reiterate that I am not advocating for lowering standards here. I want a highly competent workforce, in and out of the medical field. At no point have I asked that students be given unearned passing grades. What I am asking for is that students be supported, financially and otherwise, in their attempts to learn and earn passing grades.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#84

Post by cannaceo »

senortumnus wrote: post #68
hilbert42 wrote: post #62

Earlier 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…

While I agree that we shouldn't lower the standards of the MD process I am not convinced that proficiency at organic chemistry is predictive of physician quality. I'd rather see physicians studying computer science than ochem as tech seems more relevant to the future of medicine. To that extent I'm always willing to entertain reform.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#85

Post by cannaceo »

Siddarth1977 wrote: post #72
cannaceo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My experience in medical school is that your success is based on your ability to memorize large amounts of information that is of low conceptual difficulty in short periods of time. This isn't a trait that is selected for in passing ochem. Furthermore, ochem is the last time in your undergrad or medical school training where you'll be faced with that level of conceptual rigor.

You could just as easily ask all the undergrads to train for a marathon and see who has the discipline to follow through. It would probably be more relevant because at least its health-related.

I think overall we want our doctors to have high general intelligence so we'll continue to demand o-chem. We all have our biases against the kids who couldn't pass o-chem.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#86

Post by forgetbook »

nh23423fefe wrote: post #81
forgetbook wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you evaluate entrance to your roofing company based on a worker's ability to solder circuit boards?

You are confusing the necessary with the sufficient and ignoring that competence is correlated across diverse tasks. So yes, I could hire someone based only on seeing them perform at a high level in an unrelated task.

How do you think I confuse necessary and sufficient?

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#87

Post by bell-cot »

Three data points:

- A friend who got a Ph.D. in Chemistry at Berkeley in the 1970's - in spite of major health issues - told stories about entitled pre-med students back then, aggressively telling him that they needed/expected $Grade in the course which he was a TA for, in order to get into their preferred medical school. (From a quick web search, Berkeley has a "top 10 in the U.S." chemistry program.)

- A kid I once knew got straight A's in the "weeder" organic chemistry classes at University of Michigan in the mid 1980's - in spite of being, in his own words, clearly less bright than the average student in his class. His secret? - nose-to-the-grindstone discipline. He studied organic chemistry 4 hours per day, 6 days per week, from the week before classes began until the week after the final exam. (Similar to Berkeley, U of M looks to have a "top 10 in the U.S." chemistry program.)

- One of my relatives spent her career as a pharmacist. (Which also required organic chemistry classes.) She wasn't able to pass that class at U of M - but their Pharmacy program had less-lofty academic requirements (vs. pre-med), so she was able to re-take organic chemistry over the summer at another university (2 or 3 big steps down the academic rigor rankings from U of M), and get a "good enough" grade to continue in the U of M Pharmacy program.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#88

Post by fsckboy »

forgetbook wrote: post #27
engineer_22 wrote: post #26

Earlier 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?

your comment incorporates so much ... fail

>It is trivially simple for an educator to write a test that

while it is not trivial to write any test, it is trivial to have the test cover the material that was taught and not the material that wasn't, and that's how tests are written

> every student fails, curve the grades into a normal distribution,

then the bulk of students didn't fail under the normal meaning of grading on a curve (unless you clarify, do you mean the students had a normal distribution of "learning some material", but even the highest cohort didn't learn enough of the material to constitute getting credit for having taken the class?

> and place blame on students while showing a normal distribution of outcomes to administration.

what blame would there be to place on students if a normal distribution is shown to the administration? unless as above, all the students are failed and blamed for failure?

> Do you think that practice produces better learning?

testing students on material taught produces better learning, yes. Grading on a curve is more fair to students than not grading on a curve, as it simplifies the task for the professor to write the exam by better smooths any unevenness in the relative difficulty of the questions across different material.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#89

Post by hilbert42 »

cannaceo wrote: post #84
senortumnus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While I agree that we shouldn't lower the standards of the MD process I am not convinced that proficiency at organic chemistry is predictive of physician quality. I'd rather see physicians studying computer science than ochem as tech seems more relevant to the future of medicine. To that extent I'm always willing to entertain reform.

"I am not convinced that proficiency at organic chemistry is predictive of physician quality"

Reckon that's true from the very small sample of my own doctors. It would be nice if we had anecdotal info from MDs who reckon it was actually useful and the reason for why it was.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#90

Post by hilbert42 »

forgetbook wrote: post #53
hilbert42 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tough question, but it boils down to the type of subject matter that's been taught. I'll use myself as a illustration: I've done a wide range of subjects in my time and I'll use two instances. One was philosophy which included political philosophy the other electronics (which was separate from science, physics, chemistry, etc.). Philosophy covers a vast field: analytic Phil./logic requires mathematical precision wher…

So, it varies, and is loosely coupled at best, even looking from a macro-level. The problem I see is that while students have enormous incentive to match a company's standard, companies have very little incentive to be a part of that process. A student pursuing a degree in a larger pursuit of a career is faced with a founder's dilemma. They shoulder all of the risk of failure, and have no recourse. It isn't a company…

The point you raise isn't unique to the medical profession (although it's likely at the sharp edge), but it's endemic in other professions too. It's a much bigger cultural issue involving employees' attitude to work, long term job security and employers' indifference, etc. Huge topic, too complex to make much sense of here.

A related problem is the continuing education issue/ongoing skills etc. It's always been a bit of a joke from a workforce-wide/global perspective. Again, the reason why that's so is also involved and complex.

Post reply on HN