Scarcity and Its Uses

I’ve been loosely following the story of the chemistry adjunct Maitland Jones, who was let go by New York University after students complained that his class was too hard. Obviously, from a purely external vantage point and relying only on press accounts, it’s impossible to say much of substance about the specific case. But I’ve been glad to see that the case has engendered some discussion about the meaning of academic rigor.

Rigor and scarcity (of good/passing grades) are often conflated, but they are not the same thing.

To my mind, at least, a rigorous class is one that compels significant student engagement. A class that pushes them to do more than just memorize or go through the motions in order to be successful can count as rigorous. That’s true no matter the grade distribution. If a class goes so well that everyone is intensely engaged, everyone does great work and everyone gets an A, I’d happily consider it rigorous. (In many graduate programs, an A is the default grade for a seminar, but I don’t remember anyone complaining about how easy they were.) On the other side, a class with a harsh grade distribution can still be shallow.

The kind of rigor I’m endorsing relies on a blend of the material, the instructor, the format, the setting and the students. I’ve had classes that I thought met the standard and classes that missed on one or more levels.

Engagement works wonders, educationally. Students who roll up their sleeves and really dig into the material will develop their skills at a higher level, will learn more and may well develop inclinations they didn’t know they had. Those classes can be life-changing. Classes that are difficult but not engaging, by contrast, can feel almost punitive. And yes, a class with shallow or simplistic material can do only so much.

My frustration with the discourse around the NYU chemistry class is that it largely ignores that the production of scarcity is the purpose of the course. A high fail rate is a feature, not a bug. “Weed-out” classes—never liked the term, but there it is—exist because a system requires narrowing down the number of students who want to pursue something.

Premed requirements are an obvious case. In order to keep doctors’ salaries high, the medical profession restricts the number of seats in medical schools. That forces admissions committees at medical schools to find grounds on which to exclude the majority of applicants. Academic records are a facially nondiscriminatory basis on which to exclude. If everyone were suddenly to get A’s in organic chemistry, another scarcity mechanism would have to develop to take its place. The system isn’t built to allow everyone who wants to be a doctor to be a doctor.

Here I’ll make the obvious asterisk. Yes, we want doctors who are smart and capable. But I just don’t believe that the current system uses up the entire possible talent pool.

The lack of scarcity is part of what makes community colleges “less than” in the eyes of many. If prestige attaches to exclusivity, then places as inclusive as community colleges will lack prestige. If you use the Groucho Marx theory of prestige—never join a club that would accept you as a member—then any place with an open door is off-putting. But exclusivity and rigor are not the same thing.

If we want to do away with arbitrary mechanisms for scarcity, we need to look much more widely than just at higher education. To the extent that desirable jobs are scarce, competition for them will ensue; as they get scarcer, the competition will intensify. But if good jobs are plentiful, then suddenly we don’t need weed-out mechanisms anymore. If anything, we need to throw the doors open even wider. Over the last year or two, we’ve seen what happens to arbitrary barriers when there’s a labor shortage; all of a sudden, employers who wouldn’t consider anyone without a four-year degree discover that talent comes in many forms. It always did, but it wasn’t always welcome. Now it is.

I don’t know if Maitland Jones was wronged. But I do know that large-scale failure is built into our current systems for allocating scarce goods. Arguing over the distribution of scarce goods while taking their scarcity as given is something, but at a more basic level, it misses the point. With many ways to succeed, we could encourage all talent to flourish. And education could focus on empowering students rather than excluding them.