NEW YORK, NY – Oct 6 (DPI) – An 84-year-old former Princeton professor renowned as a demanding instructor of the notoriously challenging subject of organic chemistry got fired this summer by New York University – because several students formally complained that his class was too hard.

The professor, Maitland Jones Jr., wound up in the NYU administration’s crosshairs when 82 of his 350 students signed a petition – not calling for his ouster but “blaming him for their poor test scores,” according to The Times. The school terminated his contract this summer.

Organic chemistry has long been one of the most challenging science courses taught to undergraduates, and it’s widely seen as a “weed-out” test for students seeking good grades before applying to medical school.

The Times report pointed out that the dust-up at NYU was more evidence of “a sea change in teaching, from an era when professors set the bar and expected the class to meet it, to the current more supportive, student-centered approach.” The report pointed out too that college students, who have had to deal with the pressures of the nearly 3-year pandemic, are having a hard time studying and focusing these days, a sentiment that Professor Jones voiced a decade ago, the Times said.

The Times’s editors added a strangely anodyne headline – “At NYU, Student Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was To Blame?” – suggesting that the newspaper too is sympathetic to the pandemic-aggrieved students taking Dr. Jones’s class at NYU.

But readers – who posted more than 6,000 comments attached to the article – came out squarely in support of Professor Jones, and voiced the growing view that higher education, especially after the pandemic, is simply coddling rather than challenging its students. A widespread sentiment: “I hope if some of these kids somehow get into med school, I don’t end up being one of their patients.”

Among the top-six most popular comments, including, posted first, the top-recommended comment, which received 7800 upvotes:

One of the students complained that the grades did not reflect the time and effort they put in. That perspective misses the point. In life you are graded for results rather than effort. The students better understand that pretty soon.

I’m a college professor and echo Dr. Jones’s observations about students having increased difficulties with concentration the past decade or so, beginning with the advent of smartphones and the ubiquity of social media. And although, in my experience, students are doing better mentally this year, they are still struggling in the wake of covid. From this article, Dr. Jones sounds like a brilliant, deeply dedicated (still teaching at age 84!), if demanding professor. I would, however, amend Marc Walters’ statement to say that the university would “extend a gentle but firm hand to the customers and those who pay the tuition bills.” That’s really what we’re talking about: pleasing customers, getting good reviews, maintaining high U.S. News rankings, etc. I, for one, hope I don’t receive medical care from a doctor who couldn’t pass a tough undergraduate organic chemistry course.

I taught a language that is difficult for English speakers to learn. One year, the first test of the second semester came back with scores in an upside-down bell curve. The students either wrote a nearly perfect exam or missed almost everything. Very few were in the middle. I asked the “A” students each to write an anonymous paragraph about how they had studied for the test. I collected these paragraphs and compiled them into a single handout. When the class saw the handout, some of the students who had done poorly said things like, “But that’s a lot of work!” Exactly. Teaching mostly at small colleges that prided themselves on giving students individual attention, I had generous office hours and offered review sessions before the finals. I put certain aspects of the course on a self-paced basis. Guess who showed up for the office hours and review sessions. The students who were already doing well. Guess who zoomed through the self-paced part of the course. The students who were already doing well. Doing poorly in a class should be a reason not to go into certain fields. A student who can’t hack organic chemistry does not belong in medical school. A student who can’t hack calculus shouldn’t go into engineering. These courses should not be simplified for their sake.

This is incredibly, appalling sad. I had the good fortune to take Prof. Jones’s organic chemistry at Princeton. It was hard, and I was not especially good at it, but I am still glad I took it. Even though I went on to a career in the humanities, and never “used” the hard-won and soon-lost chemical knowledge, I cherish the lessons his 8:30 am class instilled of hard work, creative problem solving, and having fun even as you struggle. “It’s all about the blood, man!” Jones used to exclaim, as he encouraged us to go on weekend morning runs through the woods with him. (He wore shorts, and the brush would leave rivulets of blood streaming down his legs.) One benefit back then was there was a separate traditional lecture-based orgo course, which attracted the “only for pre-med” crowd, so it was a self-selective student population that opted in for Jones’s rigorous problem-solving pedagogy — people who wanted to wrestle with the challenges, to discover science rather than cram down whatever was served to them. Side note: Jones used to always start his exams with extensive block quotes from his favorite literature. I owe to him my introductions to Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy, in addition to a life-long respect for and fascination with the science of chemistry. Also: He was always nice, respectful, and sympathetic to students’ health issues, even when they got in the way of lab, exams, etc.

Why is the default reaction of universities now to ease the course curriculum instead of failing out students that do not need to be studying in a particular program? If you can’t focus enough to handle the coursework, that’s a sign that it isn’t a field for you.

“The entire controversy seems to illustrate a sea change in teaching, from an era when professors set the bar and expected the class to meet it, to the current more supportive, student-centered approach.” It is this very sea change that led me to retire from my tenured university post after 40 years. We are in an age now that dismisses rigorous expertise and prioritizes student comfort. It is an unsustainable model.