For its part, an NYU spokesperson said that the university had already been evaluating what they called 'stumble courses', which is what I would say have traditionally been called 'weed-out' courses, and organic chemistry has a well-deserved reputation in that line. It appears from the news story that some of his students did not realize this situation and were surprised when their complaints to the university led to him being let go (which was not a request that they had made).īut Jones himself seems to have been ready to retire - he told NYU that he had been noticing a decline in the quality and work ethic of the students over the years, and that the pandemic really made this more clear (and more quickly) than ever. Jones himself is 84, and retired from Princeton fifteen years ago he's been teaching at NYU on a yearly contract basis. In short, NYU has fired a longtime chemistry professor (Maitland Jones) because of student complaints that his organic chemistry course was too demanding, that grades and test scores were too low, and that the class was being taught in a such a way that these faults could apparently not be remedied.

This story has set off a great deal of comment in the chemistry community, as well it should.

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