Students Need Consequences, Not Misplaced "Kindness"
NYU’s actions reinforce this failure-intolerant, challenge-avoidant mindset which harms students.
By Rebekah Wanic and Nina Powell
Stephanie Saul recently highlighted the actions taken at NYU to remove an award-winning professor in response to student complaints about grades in a “high-stakes” organic chemistry course. Rather than promote a standard whereby hard work and effort are rewarded and taking personal responsibility is encouraged, the administration chose to eliminate a professor who endorsed this higher standard. These actions provide another example of the precarious path that higher education has stumbled down under the guise of being student-centered. What is problematic is that these decisions are adopted and implemented without a principled questioning of what a university education is, or should be for, and without careful consideration of whether such practices align with the answer. They do not.
We have previously argued that, despite the intuitive appeal and good intentions, these types of actions supporting a student-centered education are harmful to students’ short and long-term growth and success. In brief, the call for student-centered education positions satisfaction over educational outcomes as the primary metric upon which educational success is based. This in turn leads to designing a tertiary curriculum around a soft landing (e.g., lighter readings, more straightforward content, more grade inflation, more wiggle room on deadlines, warm language feedback, etc.) in the name of accessibility and the promotion of student comfort.
It appears that we no longer value the negative side (i.e., the discomfort and challenge) of a meaningful experience. In the short-termism of this student-centered ethos, we lose sight of delaying gratification to achieve longer term rewards. Instead, students are rewarded and reinforced for their every immediate and momentary discomfort. In response, the university builds in concessions every step of the way to mitigate these temporary upsets rather than promoting a message of resilience that centers around personal responsibility, or promoting tolerance during struggle to create a robustness that can buffer against the inevitability of failure. Students become risk-averse, have their stress and insecurities reinforced and amplified by the university’s responses, and are inculcated with constant messaging that their university education is hard, and that this is a bad thing. NYU’s actions in this case further reinforce this failure-intolerant, challenge-avoidant mindset which ultimately harms students by depriving them of the meaning and personal growth that they might have otherwise found in their university education.
NYU’s response inculcates student helplessness which hinders their development. Perhaps some students with poor grades were not actually capable of completing the coursework or their failure is indicative of a lack of suitability for the medical profession. Perhaps, as the article highlights, it was a failure to put in the necessary effort to succeed in this specific area. Any of these causes are issues for which targeted intervention could be designed to have a meaningful impact on students’ growth and success. (For example, better access to career counseling to find areas that fit one’s strengths or study skills training for incoming freshmen to assist them in learning how to use their time more efficiently.) However, the hard reality of failure may be the best motivator for personal adjustment.
Furthermore, the petition highlights a problematic student perception about grading and academic success. When students express that their grades do not align with effort, academics and the institution should highlight that effort is not rewarded independent of effectiveness. Grades should be commensurate with knowledge and ability, not effort alone. Who better than the professor, a subject matter expert, to determine the standard by which knowledge is assessed?
Beyond that, how can we expect society to have functioning professionals if we progress students through their qualifications on the basis of effort alone? Do any of us want a surgeon who made their way through medical school because they tried really hard, but ultimately never proved competent in their medical knowledge and understanding? The realization that one may not know as much as they believe they do or that they lack a particular skill is likely to result in momentary unpleasantness. But this is necessary and valuable, as the realization can enable people to choose alternative paths to which they may be better suited, and to make space for others who can and will excel.
Students who are highly talented and competent deserve a challenging education as well. Every time that we lower criteria for success, we compromise greatness in favor of mediocrity. Actions like NYU’s undermine alternative opportunities, agency and choice for those students who do not fit well with a particular subject matter or a domain of knowledge, and hold back those students who are successful by devaluing their educational experience. Who wins here?
Individuals are instead supported in the unrealistic and damaging belief that they can do or be anything. Don’t get us wrong. Having a dream to achieve big things is good. But, it is also important to have a genuine awareness and evaluation of where our strengths lie. This knowledge is necessary for individuals to make choices and select a path that will work best for them, and for society.
Finally, consider how reducing expectations is rooted in the unkind belief that most, if not all, students lack the ability to handle heavier readings, more uncertain and complex content, the higher-stakes of uninflated grading, the impactful deadlines that come with consequences when not met, and more honest and direct feedback about both strengths and weaknesses. Universities are increasingly removing opportunities for growth because they tend to be unpleasant. In the end, educators, administrators and institutions, in direct contrast with what they purport to provide, are denying students access to the type of educational experience universities were designed for and that students rightfully deserve - a transformational experience that has the ability to radically shake and move us from our narrow views and comfortable beliefs to ultimately make us better, both individually and collectively.
Students should come to university with the expectation that they are there to learn; to be pushed and challenged by someone with expertise. Students should expect to be guided carefully through these challenges, with acknowledgement that their effort, satisfaction and preferences are not always useful metrics for determining policy and that they can conflict with other values and priorities, such as to educate and assess. They should also expect that sometimes they will fail, that they may feel uncomfortable, but that this discomfort is useful and necessary for growth. A student-centered education and actions like those taken at NYU make all of these things less likely.
By promoting an instrumental, satisfaction-driven education, universities are failing to foster resilience in the face of adversity and conditioning students to seek short-term, low-value gains at the expense of long-term, meaningful success. Students are being held back by the very policies implemented with the intention of helping them. This is why well-meaningness should not be the primary indicator of a successful initiative - we must think more critically about what it means to truly care for the student and what will promote meaningful success.
Book recommendation: The prescience of ideas in this book is hard to overstate. Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and It’s Quarrels with Science by Gross and Levitt was published in 1994.
“The primary reason for their success is not that they put forward sound arguments, but rather that they resort constantly and shamelessly to moral one-upmanship…Be assured that it conceals fundamental weaknesses of fact and logic in the argument of the accuser” (italics in original)