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My theory is that chemistry (i.e. organic and biochemistry) are common weed-out courses for pre-med students. The grade-grubbing is intense, and those courses often end up as gauntlets as a result. It's a vicious cycle -- students grub for advantage; professors make the course "harder" to compensate. Also, few professors want to teach huge lecture halls of kids who are only there for the grade, and view the whole exercise as a waste of their time.

(Having taught a few sections of this kind of thing myself, I'm not entirely unsympathetic. It's a long, painful day when you're waiting at hour 5+ of a lab session, watching someone fumble around hopelessly with gel rig or something, knowing that they're never going to make it and that this result is going to make or break their grade for the quarter...)

I had an O-Chem professor who explicitly set a curve and gave incredibly difficult exams, such that only a few people in the 100+ person class could get an A. It was almost like he was transparently trying to reduce the student population.

Isn't an early weed-out a service to the students? The school could pass through 100% of their premed students, taking their money for all four years of their undergrad only for most of their premeds to get weeded when they apply to medical schools. If instead they get weeded a few years earlier, they still have time to change their major and go for an undergrad degree that will suit them better. Some may choose to drop out completely when they get weeded out of premed, and the school will lose tuition money from those.

But what cynical advantage does the school gain from weeding out premeds? Besides tough love for the students who won't cut the mustard, what is their motivation for weeding out premeds?

I don't know if I'd say "service to the students", and I definitely have a few things to say about the artificial caps placed on med students and use of absolutely irrelevant courses (like biochemistry lab and anything beyond basic organic chemistry) but sure, I suppose some some filtering mechanism is of value.

> But what cynical advantage does the school gain from weeding out premeds? Besides tough love for the students who won't cut the mustard, what is their motivation for weeding out premeds?

Teaching these pre-med courses is expensive and hard. They're huge, require armies of TAs, and the educational experience blows (that's a scientific term) for both professor and student. Aside from the raw economic incentives (professors in this area tend to bring in far more money from research than teaching even the largest classes), believe it or not, a lot of professors actually want to teach their subject well. They love it. They do not love giving Biochem 101 lectures to a an audience of 100-1000 uninterested, uninspired undergrads who are only there because the AMA is making them jump through a hoop.

Just to be clear, though: I don't think I'm suggesting anywhere that this is "cynical" behavior. Everyone is acting rationally given the rules of the game. Even the O-chem professor from my own life was acting in an extreme form of rationality -- I assume he didn't make the course hard out of some cynical motivation, but because he had a huge class and he wanted to provide a useful measurement of talent. One way to do that is to make it really, really hard and spread out the curve.

(But he might also have been forcing the pre-meds into a different section by reputation.)

> Teaching these pre-med courses is expensive and hard. They're huge, require armies of TAs, and the educational experience blows (that's a scientific term) for both professor and student.

Sure, but what we would expect due to this is pre-med courses that are all of roughly equal difficulty (perhaps with slightly harder classes earlier in the degree), but with none of them being exceedingly difficult, or being perceived as a singular "weed-out" class. A "weed-out" class is one that's badly taught, even by comparison with other classes in the same program. If better-quality teaching is not feasible, it probably needs to be split into two modules - O-Chem I and O-Chem II, taken separately, with other material being slightly reduced/compressed to compensate.

> A "weed-out" class is one that's badly taught

I disagree, a weed-out course can be well taught and still weed out most students who take it. If a course requires a level of dedication and memorization ability that most students don't possess, then it will weed out lazy, disinterested and unintelligent students no matter how good the instructors are. You might claim that a lazy and disinterested student is still the fault of the professor, but it's not the professor's job to babysit a 19 year old and make him to spend Friday night studying instead of getting drunk in a frat party.

All college courses require dedication and memorization, so "lazy, disinterested and unintelligent" students will always be hit by gradual attrition - or, more likely, they will gradually realize that their college program is a lot harder than they might have expected, and do their best to shape up rather than switch to something else. "Weed-out" classes, as a rule, are perceived as highly peculiar in a way that doesn't simply boil down to tougher standards.

Not all courses are made equal, some college courses intrinsically require more dedication and memorization than others. These courses will naturally come to be called weed-out courses.

Exactly. I'm reminded of the phrase "you can dazzle them with your brilliance or baffle them with your BS." In science and mathematics there's no room for BS. Answers are either correct or incorrect, and analysis must be applied to obtain the correct answer. American students have been conditioned to fail in such an environment, having been told all their lives (I'm American BTW) that its "too hard" and that it's okay if you're not able to do it.

Honestly, a doctor incapable of thinking is not who I want for my doctor. A doctor incapable of thinking while under stress is not who I want for my doctor. How do you test for those qualities? Many colleges use O-chem. Hence it becomes a "weed out" course.

We'll just have to wait and see whether this professor went above and beyond what's required for a "weed out" course or whether NYU just killed their premed program.

> I'm reminded of the phrase "you can dazzle them with your brilliance or baffle them with your BS." In science and mathematics there's no room for BS.

Sure, but this applies to the whole of pre-med as a discipline - it sits solidly within the STEM overall area. It's not like other classes in the program are any less reality-based.

> They do not love giving Biochem 101 lectures to a an audience of 100-1000 uninterested, uninspired undergrads.

And if Biochem 101 doesn't weed them out, those 100-1000 uninterested uninspired undergrads will be dumped on the next premed course after biochem, moving the problem further along the process and subjecting even more premed instructors to the glut of subpar students. Better to get those students retracked into a more appropriate major sooner than later.

> Teaching these pre-med courses is expensive and hard.

Well they get paid for it, don't they? Either from the government or student loans, most schools aren't doing it for free. From a cynical money perspective, the short term incentives of a school is to never flunk any student who can pay for more classes. But that's not what's going on.

I agree with your first point. I'm not sure if that qualifies as "cynical", but it's definitely true. It's critical to winnow down these huge classes before upper-level coursework begins.

> Well they get paid for it, don't they? Either from the government or student loans, most schools aren't doing it for free.

No, they don't get paid nearly enough to justify the time of the people involved. With weird, rare exceptions, anyone teaching one of these lecture courses at a major research school (i.e. any public school) makes most of their salary -- and earns far more money for the school -- by doing research. Maybe it all pencils out in aggregate (e.g. the teaching staff is a loss, but at N=250 students you break even, or whatever), but I suspect that isn't true in general.

Teaching these courses takes up so much time that you barely get anything else done for a whole quarter/semester. That's hard when you have a lab of people to manage and an active research program. Schools usually manage it by indenture, coercion, voluntary mutual sacrifice, or all of the above.

There are different reasons for investing in it despite this fact, but the big one is the unwritten rule that "this is a University, and this is what we do". Sometimes you take a loss to support the wider team. In this case, it's pretty bad marketing to have a university without a pre-med pathway, just like it's bad marketing to have a gym without a climbing wall (or whatever the fad is these days).

My sister got an MA, worked for over a decade in public health, and then returned to college to attempt biochem one summer. She started as pre-med like all of her friends, realized in her second year of undergrad she could make an impact without going into medicine, and changed her major.

So you're right, there are only so many slots for medical school, and you don't even need to be pre-med to qualify. Unless you're just ambitious, ultra-focused, and well prepared enough to do pre-med into med fresh out of high school, you have time to gain experience and decide what you really want.

Carl Allamby worked as an auto mechanic for 20 years before going back to attend medical school. It's a difficult path but someone who wants it badly enough can make it happen.

https://www.blackenterprise.com/auto-mechanic-becomes-a-doct...

No, it is a symptom of a oligopolistic industry focused more on gatekeeping than scientific advancement. The AMA needs to be broken up under antitrust. Doctors do not have a right to high salaries any more than software engineers. If they can't figure out how to remain relevant, perhaps they need to reflect upon the failures of their field. Unfortunately demagogues like Lina Khan prefer to go after tech workers rather than the real elephant in the room - the US healthcare cartel.

Aside from anti-trust, an executive order or education department policy to force medical school admissions to be tied to e.g. the 50th percentile of MCATs based on existing difficulty could also be a solution. Enough bullshit about building schools in third world countries, undergraduate research, or personal statements. It is not the role of the professor or institution to determine whether a student is "qualified" to pursue a profession. That should be left entirely to the market, not the ivory towers of academia. It is ridiculous that we are importing healthcare professionals from overseas while local staff are being overworked and there are not enough residency positions despite the demand. There is rot in the system, all the way from academia to insurance.

Offhand, I'd say something along the lines of "Not acquiring a reputation for producing undergrads who either fail out of med school or end up accidentally killing a patient due to gross incompetence".

I find it interesting that the apparent thesis of the petition is "This class is too difficult" as opposed to "This specific professor is not good at teaching". Has there been a noted decline in his skills in the past few years, or has the content or style of his lectures changed? If not, what is special about the current crop of students as opposed to the ones in the past?

This is a very dangerous precedent. If you don't have a fundamental and strong grasp of organic chemistry, you have no business being a physician, no exceptions. As an analogy, imagine a civil engineering program that bowed down to student complaints about the intro statics or materials science courses being too difficult. Would you want to drive across a bridge designed by one of their graduates?

"Has there been a noted decline in his skills in the past few years, or has the content or style of his lectures changed?"

Yes, and yes.

"WSN also accessed student evaluation records for courses taught by Jones, which showed that his scores had been consistently low for years — long before the spring 2022 student petition. In the past five years, Jones’ co-professors teaching the same course typically had scores around or above 4.0 on a 5.0 scale, while Jones averaged around 3.3. In his final semester, his evaluation score dropped to 2.4.

"They were part of an experimental semester, one that was forced to combine the in-person with the online, and Jones was not considerate of the need for change. ... Students said they spent 11 to 19 hours per week on the course — a course that traditionally takes up 10 to 15 hours per week." (https://nyunews.com/opinion/2022/10/05/maitland-jones-nytime...)

Yeah, I've seen those curves. I had a chemistry professor announce "I like to construct my exams such that the best student can complete seventy-five percent of the material in the time allotted." Complete, not get right. Too bad for him he got slapped with the gauntlet he threw down.

The US med/school complex is regulated by the AMA based on the number of residency slots. The schools get high tuitions and the restricted supply means we get less but higher paid doctors. The US doesn't have enough doctors and accordingly there is a large amount of medicine that we don't need doctors for such that PAs and NPs are taking over.

In reality O-chem should not be a pre-med class nor should it be required by medical schools. Other countries admit straight to med school without a BS requirement.

It's really more about, how much do you really want this and less about the coursework.

However, O-chem probably wouldn't have any students if it wasn't a premed course either.

100% agreed, except for the last line. There are plenty of O-chem dorks! It doesn't come into its own until you start applying it to problems, then it's fun.

Also, O-chem would be a lot more fun if it were actually a small lecture course. Pre-med ruins it by turning it into "memorize this book of obscure recipes". You might as well point them to the Joy of Cooking and have them memorize that, instead. Same purpose, but at least the outcome would be delicious.

The AMA doesn’t control med schools at all. What they do is lobby the government to not increase subsidies for residencies. Without more subsidies new residencies don’t open, and since every med school grad needs to do it to become a doctor med schools can’t open more slots until the number of residencies increases.

That is partially misinformation. The AMA lobbies Congress to increase funding for residencies.

https://savegme.org/

It's great how they get to blame Congress... instead hospitals and academic institutions could just you know fund residencies themselves. It's not like they can't afford it.

Teaching hospitals are mostly non-profit, often tied to universities or public health systems. They have limited funds. Some do put in a little of their own funding for graduate medical education, but realistically you're not going to squeeze much more out of them.

If you don't believe me then download their financial reports and look where their money is going.

> I had an O-Chem professor who explicitly set a curve and > gave incredibly difficult exams, such that only a few people > in the 100+ person class could get an A.

Isn't that how an 'A' grade is supposed to work? I'm not suggesting you curve it to deliberately fail people, but an 'A', 'B' and 'C' should have some meaning. If 90% of a class get's an A, the grading is meaningless and might as well just be pass/fail.

The grade will be meaningless anyway if all it's doing is comparing to that class performance. A grade C from a particularly talented year of students could mean a B or A- in a less talented one.

Unsure if 100+ is a decently sized sample to say that a grade curve based on current class performance has any meaning beyond that class.

These classes are huge. The statistical difference between classes of 200+ students is minimal to non existent.

What is grade-grubbing?

This describes a pattern of behaviors in which a student's goal is to raise their grade. It can involve approaching after class to discuss an exam, asking for extra credit, asking for a regrading or retaking exams, asking for a small letter grade bump final scoring (B+ vs A-), etc. Students are especially motivated to do this because most future opportunities are locked behind specific grade point average cutoffs.

Some students go and complain when they don't get top grades. I can see it being very tedious when lots of students come and complain, so nice professors quickly go to other courses while only those who shrugs off complaints stay.

OChem is a weeder course for med students. Med schools are controlled by the AMA, which intentionally keeps the number of doctors low for normal cartel reasons. It's not about teaching Organic Chemistry, it's about reducing the number of students who can apply for an artificially limited number of med school slots.

That is misinformation. The number of doctors is kept low by limits on the number of residency program slots in teaching hospitals. Residency programs are almost entirely funded by the federal government through Medicare. The AMA has publicly lobbied to increase the number of doctors, and even put their own funding in.

https://www.ama-assn.org/education/gme-funding/save-graduate...

Chem majors are not their target, the majority of orgo Chem victims are potential medical students. They take the class because they don't have a choice and it keeps the department relevant. Been that way for decades now. Imagine gatekeeping software engineering to people who can memorize and regurgitate the Intel CPU menus and implement the X86 standard from memory.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/it-s-time-to...

Is that not what your computer arch class was? In mine we had to write every mips instruction and what it did, from memory, on pencil and paper. And that was the "Final" along with some demorgans.

And exactly how many software engineer roles test for that during interviews? We test algorithm and data structures for a reason, and we don't interview for computer arch outside of certain systems engineering roles. Tech is much more empirical than many of the more traditional fields. The companies that test framework knowledge/implementation details first are generally all mediocre/traditional enterprise companies where the software engineering department is secondary to sales when it comes to value generation. None of the top tier companies care about specific framework and architectural details outside of domain specific knowledge if your day to day doesn't heavily depend on it.

> Is that not what your computer arch class was? In mine we had to write every mips instruction and what it did, from memory, on pencil and paper.

A few deterministic RISC op codes that nearly mirrors a Turing machine can hardly compare to the rigor of organic/biochemistry. You don't see exams asking students to build a branch predictor from the transistor level.

Take a look at what organic chemistry really entails

https://www.masterorganicchemistry.com/reaction-guide/

All the reactions above can be combined in arbitrary ways and a potential student is expected to recall and apply the concepts in an instant on-demand.

Yep, similar experience, and I was an undergrad 20+ years ago.

In the undergraduate institution I attended grading on a curve was not common outside of Chemistry classes. I specifically remember taking a chem class where the majority of the class failed on a percentage basis, but most people passed after the curve.

What was the goal of that class exactly? To learn something? To ensure people passed and repeated the same experience in the next class which was also graded on a curve? What did it mean exactly to have passed Chem 1/2 and Organic chem? It was taught poorly and you were tested on concepts that were not taught properly and not understood.

I know people who opted to take the same Chemistry sequence at a local community college and they learned way more than we did, simply because the teacher wasn't trying to haze them.

Same and also in Math and Physics classes. SUNY system schools. Also 20 years ago. The vast majority of my classes were 300+ people.

If it wasn't the self-authored textbooks refreshed every year, chances were that the adjunct teaching barely spoke English.

It took me extra long to get through school just because of all of the math classes I had to drop and take the next semester just because on the first day I showed up to class, the prof was mumbling or non-verbal, would face the board and write illegibly all lecture and not explain a damn thing.

My chem professor in college was like that, to an extreme degree. He openly declared that he was going to put trick question and gotchas in quizzes and pop quizzes—all of which counted towards the final grade, mocked students who got tricked, insisted to talk in an opaque manner, and dismissed any objection to his teaching style. It was the only way to learn, he claimed.

But at midterms and finals, his class scored consistently worse than the same course taught by a different professor, even though he was the one writing the exams. And he got angry every time this happened.

My highschool chem teacher was a pyromaniac, we did things on the regular during class downtime that should have been expelling offenses.

My college chem professor was a first year out of industry, incapable of basic socialization, we all knew why he became a professor. The head of the department had his own text/work books, we had to spend like $400 on ~5 books for one class. This new guy had to teach off of this and had strict guidelines around testing etc. The brightest and most studious students got like B+ end of semester. The majority F-C, and we needed a B to continue the class schedule. 80 students had their grades bumped by the dean by like 20 points so an entire engineering year wasn't flunked. It was a tight schedule and if the majority failed chem it would look bad on the school and gum up the scheduling for that class and the following class.

My friends in other majors weren't having a much better time.

> Difficult/opaque lecture style, very high difficulty tests, openly mocking students in a 500+ person lecture if he deemed a question not intelligent enough

I don’t want to condone or encourage this behavior. However, I often think back to a similar professor I had in college who I loathed at the time. I gritted through the course and complained the whole way.

Then I graduated into the working world and encountered a similarly difficult person in my management chain. Weirdly, I felt prepared to handle the situation and kept relatively calm while navigating the not-nice boss. I didn’t stay for long, but I was able to thrive and get some early career wins even under a not-nice boss.

So I don’t think mean teachers or bosses are a good thing, but at the same time I feel like I grew more during those periods than I did at other times in my education/career. I still don’t know exactly what to think about all of this.

To me the biggest problem is when the prof includes test questions that weren't covered in either the lectures or the study material (or maybe it's mentioned once on some random page of the 500 pages of study material that one was expected to read). That is simply setting up the students for failure.

My partner took Orgo from the professor in question ~20 years ago, and described it as one of the transformational classes of her undergraduate years, though she also thought it was the lowest grade she'd ever received.

Things may have changed during those decades (as things do), but she said there were options at her school to take "Maitland Jones Orgo" or "Easy Orgo", and approximately everyone knew that they would be challenged in the former, but provided the opportunity to grow more than the latter.

I'm sure there are many things involved, but perhaps he didn't fully grasp that when he moved institutions, he was also shifting his audience, and perhaps his new audience wasn't quite as interested in the challenge.

My biology 101 professor assigned his own textbook for the course. However he refunded his royalty to any student who purchased a new copy in order to eliminate the conflict of interest. This ought to be the standard policy at every college.

I remember being at a conference once and wandering through the new books display with my advisor. We saw a new edition of one of Avi Silberschatz's texts and my advisor said, "Oh, yeah, Avi has another kid about to go to college." ;-)