> "We urge you to realize that a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students' learning and well-being a priority and reflects poorly on the chemistry department as well as the institution as a whole," the petition read.
> The Times article suggests that throughout the pandemic, Jones made a number of accommodations for struggling students. He reduced the difficulty of his exams, but students were still failing them.
> "Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate," said Jones.
> The article does note that the petition never called for Jones to be fired. But the university evidently decided that the best way to resolve the situation was to turn him loose.
> His departure is certainly a loss for NYU's academic caliber. After all, Jones is a lion in the field of organic chemistry, publishing 225 papers in his 40-year career. He literally wrote the textbook, "Organic Chemistry," which weighs in at 1,300 pages.
It's sad that professors are strongly incentivized to lower difficulty and grade generously until a large majority of students pass, without having mastered the material the professor is supposed to be teaching them. No professor ever got fired for making things too easy or for imparting too little knowledge.