Engineering junior Jonathan Lehr thinks he knows why he did poorly in an introductory chemistry lab he took freshman year, and he says it wasn't because he didn't put in the work.
He didn't get the grade he wanted, he says, because he could barely understand his foreign teaching assistant.
Lehr said that the course, which is a requirement for most Engineering students, was predominantly taught by foreign students who are not native English speakers.
But this type of problem is not unique to Lehr, or even to the Chemistry Department.
It's not even unique to Penn.
Students across the country -- on campuses like Penn State and the University of California, Berkeley -- are issuing loud and often formal complaints that they are failing courses and losing scholarship opportunities because they literally can't understand a word their professors are saying.
And the complaints have even reached some state governments.
Minnesota State Rep. Bud Heidgerken (R-Freeport) introduced a bill earlier this month that would force the University of Minnesota to make English fluency a bigger factor in hiring decisions. The university already has strict English language tests for its teaching assistants.
The bill is currently standing before the Minnesota House of Representatives' Higher Education Committee.
People have been complaining about the problem for 25 years, said Heidgerken, who said he was told by Minnesota students that they could send him "busloads of students with similar complaints."
The bill would not affect any school outside of Minnesota, but Penn officials say they have been tackling the issue themselves for decades.
And University administrators say they have everything under control, though they occasionally get complaints about teachers with heavy accents.
College of Arts and Sciences Dean Dennis DeTurck said that the University "provides assistance, not punishment" to faculty members who do not speak English well, in the form of extra training programs.
Still, a University policy adopted in 1989 states that anyone teaching classes must speak English clearly. Graduate and professional student teaching staff must be evaluated and certified as having met the University's standard of English fluency in the classroom before being hired.
"I can't imagine that someone in the state legislature has a better idea of how we should be doing our jobs," said Finance professor Andrew Metrick, said that only the University should determine how best to teach students and hire faculty. Metrick often teaches large lecture courses graded by TAs from foreign countries.
"It's easy to pick on foreigners," added Metrick. "But whatever the motivation is ... it seems silly."
While Heidgerken's bill doesn't dictate exactly how the University of Minnesota would change its hiring practices, Penn officials are still doubtful of the bill's actual worth.
"On the surface, it sounds xenophobic," DeTurck said. "We have much more to gain from the perspectives of international faculty than we have to lose by making some accommodations to understand accented English."
"There is a difference between accented English and unintelligible English," he added.
But some students still would have preferred a more intelligible classroom experience.
While saying that his TA's accent did not affect his performance in an Economics class, Wharton freshman Steve Bachman said that his recitation "was not about trying to understand the information, but trying to figure out what the hell [the TA] was saying."
Accent limit? - A Minnesota rep.has introduced a bill that would force the University of Minnesota to adopt stricter hiring policies for those with heavy accents
