If you’ve got an opinion about what’s wrong with higher education today, it was probably confirmed by a recent New York Times story about the departure of an organic-chemistry professor from New York University after students complained about how he taught his course and graded their performance in it. The still-murky facts of the case have allowed it to serve as an inkblot open to interpretation.
Students these days aren’t serious, can’t study, and expect to be spoon-fed. Financially motivated administrators at overpriced colleges fancy themselves in the customer-service business, letting the students — and parents — who pay the bills call the shots. The bulk of instructors, who labor off of the tenure track, are expendable: With their employment conditional on keeping both the undergraduates and the administrators happy, they’re unable to resist their demands.