Is a Prof Failing 3/4 of the Senior Year Physics Class Normal? (Stat Phy)

[Ascendant0]

In short, we are all in our senior year taking Statistical Physics, and this professor is beyond brutal. He has a track record of failing 3/4 of the students that take his course. He teaches us the curriculum from opencourseware from a graduate level MIT Statistical Mechanics I course. He even follows some of the lecture material verbatim, and has copied 3 different exam problems from them. This here:

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/8-333-s...s-of-particles-fall-2013/pages/lecture-notes/

The thing is, in case MIT exams aren't hard enough as-is, he makes them FAR harder, because he doesn't allow us to use reference sheets (whereas the opencourseware course from MIT does, as can be seen on the "Exams" tab). So, we have to literally memorize every single thing. Every equation, ever conversion, all of it.

He doesn't give partial credit, so many students got a flat out 0 on the first exam. The class average was a 22%. The absolute highest grade was a 81%. So even the absolute top-performer barely scraped into a B-. And he made it very clear in his syllabus he doesn't curve.

After a mini-quiz, which he does at the start of every single class, we were told two months into the course that he is giving us no credit for equations because we need to label every single thing in the equation. So things like the Boltzman constant k_B, something we have now used for years? Yes, he expected us to "know that we should label every single value in an equation when answering a question", NOT based on anything he said prior, but simply because "we should know better as seniors". Two students chimed in and asked if we could please have that applied from there on out, since we were not told that expectation prior. He again reiterated in other words that we should know to "label every single thing in an equation."... then proceeds to teach, where he does not label a single thing himself. One of the others willing to speak up like myself pointed this out to him at one point, basically in a very friendly way calling him a hypocrite and asked him "How do you expect us to know to label our variables, when you don't label yours, even when you know it's something new we've never seen yet?". That of course didn't go down well, and he got a bit nasty with him.

A complaint was filed against him last year for this same exact thing. The chair did absolutely nothing about it. So now, we have the same exact problem this year, with him again looking at failing at least 3/4 of us.

And it's not possible for some of us, particularly those of us full-time students. He expects a "minimum of 20hrs per week outside of class". Students have literally quit jobs, and have neglected their other classes to try to get better grades. But you never even know what to study. Like exam 2 had questions NOT from the recitation prior to the exam, but from a future homework that wasn't due for another 3 weeks, a homework we hadn't even started yet since the prior one was due the day after the exam.

Is this normal? Is it normal for colleges to have a couple (because there are two, although this one is by far the worst) professors that fail 3/4 of the class in their final semester of senior year? From what I've heard, this is highly abnormal, and even moreso for the chair of the department to sit back and do nothing about it. We are planning to escalate the matter, but I'm trying to find out if this is a common, uncommon, or rare thing to happen?

 

[jedishrfu]

I would consider it abnormal and have heard of incidents in Texas where a professor flunked his class, thinking they all used AI to do their work. When asked how he knew that, he said he gave their answers to ChatGPT and asked it whether they were AI-generated, and, of course, the ever-agreeable AI said yes, confirming his suspicions. The professor was not experienced in the nuances of the new generation of AI tools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_content_detection?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Wikipedia cites many other cases of a similar ilk.

In your classmates' case, you must document everything, including dates and times, of what happened. Really detailed notes, then go up the chain with your grievances: dept head, student ombudsman, dean of students, ... Make sure at the start you determine the valid roadmap that your university follows because any deviation can derail your efforts.

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In the end, though, you can either drop the course and suffer the consequences if it's a late drop or stick it out and do the best that you can, as you never know if the professor will curve all grades based on effort. The dean might be sympathetic to your cause and let you drop the course late without penalty, although I've never witnessed that in person or from any of my classmates. We don't usually talk about these kinds of things where clemency was granted.

In grad school, I've had several courses where I thought I'd flunk, only to find I'd get a B, as many of my classmates did. I couldn't determine whether this was common practice. The fear of flunking is a powerful driver for students who want to learn and want to pass. It would take you to new levels of academic training, preparing you for the PhD route if you choose to follow that path.

Now I'm in a similar situation, but I'm a bit older and calmer, hanging in there because of my curiosity about new computing technologies that are very different from those when I got my master's so long ago.

One fellow grad student told me the class I'm taking is considered the toughest course in the program and that the instructor always teaches the toughest courses. He presents so many ideas that it's really hard, even with AI, to keep up with his pace. I recorded his lectures and clocked him at 10k words per 80-minute lecture, which is a lot and impossible to take any meaningful notes.

He does the same with his grad students, and they come out with a PhD and remarkable analytical skills. I feel truly honored to be in his group, as he is my advisor and sponsored me into the program when I didn't have the required GRE scores. However, my wife and I still wonder why I am doing this PhD route in my golden years of retirement when you're supposed to see the world.

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In grad school, it seems that different rules apply, where if you're showing promise but doing poorly, you'll still pass with a B. If they gave any student less, then they'd deplete their graduate rolls and have much fewer success stories. One student told me about a mentor who said that if you're spending time getting As, then you're taking time away from your research, and in the end, once you get a PhD, nobody will care what your grades are. Companies might request your transcripts, but you have your PhD, and that is what they're interested in.

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Personally, if I felt the professor was truly unfair, I might consider dropping the course and moving on. But if I noticed any genuine effort on their part to help students improve, I would definitely stay.

I remember my high school geometry teacher, who was known to be quite strict. We had 45 minutes for exams, but it was usually hard to finish in time. One day, he called us together in frustration over our bad test scores and shared his thoughts on test-taking, noting that we often spent too much time creating fancy line charts. He then shocked us by saying he would take his own exam in just 5 minutes, and therefore, we could finish ours in 45 minutes.

I'm not entirely sure how others took his advice, but personally, I felt a wave of enlightenment and inspiration that motivated me to try out his suggestions. I began creating small geometric sketches, writing them down right at the start of the test to refer back to whenever my mind felt stuck. I also learned to read the test from front to back, then pick out problems I felt confident about solving first. This approach broadened my thinking and made it easier to recall how to tackle the remaining test questions. I'd use the test to take the test and glean insights from one problem to solve another.

Another time, he mentioned how he once had accidentally ripped his pants inseam and took his trusty stapler to the teachers lounge to repair the damage and restore his dignity. He was nearing retirement and looked forward to doing community plays.

Yet another time in his class, he was writing on the board when the wind outside slammed a window shut with a loud bang. He spun around, grabbing his heart and yelling, " My heart, my heart, my heart." We all began to laugh, thinking he was being dramatic, until we saw that stare that could burn through you like a laser, and we immediately shut up, fearful of what might happen next. Nothing did, he continued, and we left thinking we just escaped a tense situation.

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Some more anecdotal stories about my teacher. In geometry class, during a lecture on compass and straightedge proofs, he mentioned how people would try to prove the trisection of an angle and that if you looked closely, you'd find a key intersection of two arcs and a line, or some combination thereof that looked like a valid intersection, but it couldn't be shown to actually intersect. If you selected a wider angle to trisect, you'd note that the three arc points formed a tiny triangle.

The following year, he posted a trisection proof and asked if anyone could find the flaw. I was ecstatic. I immediately found the mistake and raced into his homeroom the next day to give him my answer. He kicked me out of the class. But several weeks went by, and he announced that one student had found the flaw and named me. My suspicion was that I was the only student who responded to his challenge, as so many others didn't like his teaching style.

One further word about him, and my history with him during my senior year. One day, while walking to class, I passed his room and said hello cheerfully. He pulled me aside for a private conversation, saying, "Don't ever speak to me in that tone of voice again!" and that I was mocking him and that he'd recommend my removal from the National Honor Society. I was honestly shaking afterward, and to this day, I still couldn't understand what was going on in his life.

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Teachers shape their students in unusual ways they will remember forever, and that is the singular mark of a most remarkable teacher.

 

[mathwonk]

The way you describe it, the prof sounds very unreasonable indeed, but we have not heard his version. And at some point you should decide, whether your goal is to maximize your learning, or maximize your grade. It also matters of course whether you are in line for a B- in this class or an F. Good luck.

 

[jedishrfu]

One other thing, have you visited the professor after class during his office hours? Most professors will help you understand why they use a particular method of teaching. There may be a method to his madness.

One style of learning is a passive lecture style where students sit quietly listening, daydreaming, and maybe taking notes.

Other styles include the Socratic and Feynman styles. Both require active participation from the class and rely on asking questions that students must answer.

Students hate both of these active styles because they must remain alert and live in the moment for the class. No time for daydreaming, taking a nap, or doing another class's homework.

However, school studies have indicated that students achieved better grades with active learning, even though they believed they were learning less than in the passive setting.

Across decades of research:
- Lectures = passive → lowest retention
- Explanation + questioning = highest learning

While no single paper says, “Socratic/Feynman methods win.”

The combined evidence strongly supports the conclusion that active Q & A learning was far and away better than passive lecture-style learning, with a course passing rate 1.5x higher and test scores 6% higher.

—-

There is also the possibility that the professor is going through some tough times in his life and it overflows into class as impatience.

 

[mathwonk]

by the way, if you decide to try this class, the fact that you know his source for the lecture material and for the exams, should make preparation for them rather straightforward. I.e. together with like minded fellow students, make sure you learn to do every single question on those MIT exams in advance of the exam, and you should do well.

 

[Ascendant0]

Thanks for the info. While I don't have time to get back to each of you individually, I'll try and touch on some things to clarify:

1) I'm already taking his course. We were warned he is a nightmare, but we didn't get confirmation he was going to teach it until a week prior. Some students were pushing for a different professor because of what happened last year, but that other professor ended up not being able to take it for some reason. No amount of warning could've prepared us for how extreme he is though

2) As far as the difficulty, I could give you his course lecture schedule, which directly aligns with that grad level course at MIT. And you can see right on the opencourseware that the grad level course allows the students to make a reference sheet for themselves - I believe front and back, 1 page. I can also show you on our syllabus where we are not allowed reference sheets. I can also show you the exam questions from that opencourseware that he gave us, and you can see - same exact problems in a few cases, and all the others are just as hard or worse than theirs. Our course IS harder than MITs.

3) We have of course gone to his office hours. He shrugs you off. You get "yea yea, sure that sounds good", or "go figure it out yourself, that's what you're supposed to do", or "work harder". One of those three, or something similar. He makes it clear he doesn't want to be bothered by us.

What I wrote here was only the tip of the iceberg. There is SO much more to all of it, and it's shocking to me that the chair doesn't seem to care, even though I compiled evidence of things such as him having syllabus policies that do not align with the colleges, him having us self-study for an exam based on future homeworks, him not guiding us on what to actually study, etc. It was a very carefully articulated email, with bullets at the start since he'd probably only skim anyway, and then bullets at the end. The problems bulleted at the start, proposed solutions at the end.

My main thing is I wanted to check and see if this might be something that happens quite a bit in our field of study or not. I know at my old college they said never, and other resources I've looked at said this is all highly irregular.

We don't seem to have much choice but to bring it to organizations that support and fight for the students - Student Ombuds Office, student government (I heard this is good to do since they have ties with all the higher ups, and sometimes even pull with them). We weren't expecting both the chair and the associate dean of undergraduate to be so dismissive, particularly when there is over 20 students, and it's all but 2 from the entire class.

 

[jedishrfu]

Any influential parents of current or past students. Sometimes, external donor pressure could help.

A more radical approach after exhausting all your options would be to go to the news and see if they'd be interested in running a series of stories on higher Ed and bad professors.

What consequences would you all face if you and your class boycotted his course?

Personally, it appears to be an untenable problem to fix. Whatever grades you have might stay even if the professor is replaced. If it bothers you so much, request a withdrawal on mental health grounds because this can't be good for any of you. If all your classmates did the same, that might get the college’s attention.

Is the professor well-known because his research work is preventing the college from doing the right thing?

You could also ask him why he is using MIT course material to teach with, and whether he has had any professors who taught like him. Maybe he went to MIT or a sister university and expects students to function at that level. You could use his response as more evidence for your case, especially if it's unhinged.