Earthtalk

Re “At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?” (Education, October 4): Regardless of who is to blame for the poor student performance in Professor Jones’ class, firing him is a classic example of administrative overreaction. As an untenured, 84-year old professor, administrators appear to have taken the easy way out by firing him. A key factor is Professor Jones’ observation that about a decade earlier he noticed a loss of focus in students. I noticed the same phenomenon starting about 15 years ago in the university students I taught, long before the deleterious impact of the pandemic on students’ performance. Many of my colleagues around the country have noticed the same change. Something bigger has been going on, something societal in scope. Over-pampering of children by parents and teachers combined with soaring tuition has turned students into entitled customers demanding to be catered to as such. The student-professor interaction has become far more transactional than in previous years, with administrators increasingly inclined to side with their customers. Students expect their professors to be like either Mr. Rogers or Stephen Colbert and woe to those less entertaining ones who dare to assign poor performers the grades they deserve.