One lesson that American education now teaches students is that if they’re unhappy with something, the thing to do is complain until the school does something about it.
That’s what happened at New York University when a number of students in a chemistry class griped that the professor was just too hard. So NYU terminated his contract. Another veteran chemistry professor , Henry Bauer, writes about this case in today’s Martin Center article.
Writes Bauer, “It is a simple fact that average student performance in college has been declining for decades. That teachers are increasingly being assigned blame for this fact reflects broad trends in society at large: the devaluation of special expertise, the ignoring of facts and logic, and the misinterpretation of statistics, all of which are part of the social attitude once described as ‘political correctness’ and now usually called ‘wokeness.’”
Unfortunately, many faculty members (and not just in chemistry) want good evaluations from students, and the way to get them is to water down the content and inflate grades. You won’t get in trouble with higher-ups for doing that.
Bauer concludes, “Re-establishing knowledge- and understanding-based standards requires that colleges and universities make that a priority, above ‘pleasing the customer’ or seeking public prestige through inter-collegiate sports or massive research funding. It requires placing scholarly learning ahead of attempts at social engineering. If we continue to let students dictate who will teach them and elevate ‘equity’ over individual academic achievement, our future will be bleak.”
Correct.