The recent firing of an American university professor, accused by his students of being too strict in his grades, has reignited the debate in the United States about a university system too subject to the good will of its students.
Maitland Jones, who taught organic chemistry at New York University (NYU), was fired in August without an interview or clear explanation, a procedure that left him “perplexed,” he confided to AFP.
A total of 82 of his students had previously signed a petition denouncing his grade, which they considered too harsh.
“The students who signed the petition couldn’t come to terms with the fact that they weren’t doing well in my class, they were looking for someone to blame,” Professor Jones told AFP.
Yet, according to his calculations, only a quarter of his 350 students failed to pass the average.
The dismissal at the age of 84 of Maitland Jones, who taught for several decades at prestigious institutions such as Princeton or Yale, would have gone unnoticed without an article in the New York Times in early October, which ignited a lively debate.
Many other professors have given their public support to Maitland Jones, denouncing the disproportionate weight of students, for some the sensitivity exacerbated by social tensions and the recent confinements linked to COVID.
For Marty Ross, professor emeritus at Northeastern University in Boston, universities take too many tweezers in their relationships with the students who fund them and who often give feedback on the courses they take.
These “clients,” he says, tend to take a hostile attitude toward more uncomfortable subjects, such as organic chemistry, “like ‘why would anyone need this course?’.”
“Often, if they row, they give a bad grade to the course taught and can go so far as to file formal complaints,” he told AFP.
On the other hand, the retired teacher says he knows many incompetent teachers who manage to fill their class just because they have a reputation for “grading well”.
In the end, concludes Marty Ross, “the power no longer belongs to the universities, but to the students” which, according to him, is equivalent to “a patient point blank explaining to his surgeon how to perform an operation”.
The deferential relationship between students and Mandarins we observe elsewhere doesn’t really exist in American colleges, points out Karin Fischer, a journalist and research associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at Berkeley University.
“In the United States, there’s this idea that you should challenge authority in the classroom, you should question your teachers, and not take everything they say as gospel. Discussing, discussing and asking questions is part of the critical spirit of the American university”, explains the specialist.
Souradeep Banerjee, a young teacher at Temple University who has done most of his studies in India, explains that he realized the power of American students the day he was given the task of correcting exams. .
“The professor in charge of the course explained to us during a meeting that we couldn’t do it (for being too strict in the grading), the finances and functioning of the university essentially depended on the number of students who decided to enroll in our institute». He says.
The importance of this commercial relationship takes precedence for some students, who demand a quality of education commensurate with the sacrifices made to pursue higher education.
In the United States, a college student can commonly pay up to $60,000 a year in tuition, not including housing, transportation, or food. Many students have to take out large loans to finance their university studies.
“The fact that they (the students or their families) have had to go into heavy debt puts a lot of pressure on them to try to get good grades in order to finish university as soon as possible and (…) not having to complete additional semesters or quarters at university,” explains Karin Fischer.
Before enrolling in a class, Daniela James, a freshman at Temple University, says she looks into how professors rate her and reviews the ratings left by other students on the RateMyProfessor website.
“It puts a lot of pressure on me, because I can’t afford to waste time. I pay a lot,” says the student, who juggles two odd jobs outside class hours, one on her university campus and the other in a large chain American ready-to-wear.
