The Student Accommodation Problem No Professor Wants to Talk About

After the high-profile dismissal of an old-school NYU organic chemistry professor in September because his classes were too difficult, a familiar debate reignited. How hard should college be, and in what ways? Who doesn’t deserve to be there in the first place? What does it mean to receive a rigorous education, and what tangible benefits does such rigor, once defined, offer a college graduate?

Alas, the Rigor Wars echo their cultural brethren and seem to have scattered onto the requisite ideological branches. On the one side—at least according to its detractors—are the loudmouthed progressives who bemoan an outdated punitive, extrinsic collegiate structure that may actually be antithetical to the very concept of learning; on the other—according, primarily, to enemies—are the alleged old-school pedagogues whose monocles are positively befogged at threats to barriers protecting the hallowed halls from the ostensibly unqualified.

Nowhere is this conflict better expressed than in what has turned out to be the most controversial reporting topic in my journalistic career: flexible assignment deadline accommodations.

Of the two dozen professors, instructors, and even administrators I spoke to for this article, exactly two individuals were willing to attribute quotes to their names. Everyone else, from precarious adjuncts to double-tenured full professors and associate deans, demurred, requesting either anonymity or to speak on background.