by David Craig
Unfortunately, well before the Select Committee Report in 2009, there had been a long line of well–informed sceptics who had expressed concerns about UK academic standards. The standard response of universities has been to ignore them or attack the individual (perhaps the technical term for this is “heading off at the pass”?) rather than addressing the substance of their comments. In 2004, the historian Dr David Starkey claimed that:
“We are introducing the slow corruption of our universities as heads of department are pushed by reduced budgets into lowering standards. Until 10 years ago British education was seen as the gold standard around the world and our institutions and examinations as incorruptible.” 122
The House of Commons inquiry in 2009 was initiated following allegations by Dr Geoffrey Alderman, a former head of quality at the University of London and Professor Roger Brown, the former chief executive of the Higher Education Quality Council. Both argued that evidence of deteriorating standards within universities was such that only an independent inquiry would reassure the public. In 2009, Dr Alderman described a Higher Education system in which standards were not so much in decline as freefall:
“Students who would formerly have failed their degrees are being passed, and students who would formerly have been awarded... Lower Seconds are now being awarded Upper Seconds and even Firsts. Students are being admitted to commence their studies with levels of English so poor that universities are having to run remedial English courses to ensure that new entrants possess at least a basic level of literacy. Cheating is rampant, encouraged in part by lenient penalties.”123
Senior politicians with links to universities have made similar complaints from across the political spectrum. Take, for example, the comments of Lord Chris Patten, the former Conservative minister and Chancellor of Oxford University in 2007: “... I am not in favour of social inclusion at the expense of academic standards. At its crudest the widening participation agenda has been reckless in its impact on standards.”124
Alternatively, consider the views of Dame Shirley Williams, formerly of the Labour Party then of the Liberal Democrats, and someone who has worked in universities in the UK and the US. In 2002, she had this to say about British universities: “At the bottom end, there is a tail of colleges and universities which are not even second–rate. And at the top end, I doubt whether there are any internationally first–rate universities left in Britain; perhaps a few departments here and there…”125
It is worth noting that those voicing concerns about falling standards do not generally depend on the Higher Education system’s collective goodwill for their continued employment, salaries and career prospects. Those inside the system want us to believe that any quality–related problems are isolated incidents that do not represent the wider reality within universities. The university insiders would also have us believe that anybody suggesting that these quality problems are representative of the wider system is clearly a crank. The difficulty for this argument arises when UK academics are asked anonymously about standards. Then they provide a similar response to that of the ‘cranks’. A 2008 survey commissioned by the Tines Higher Education Supplement found that:
“77% of academics said pressure on them to give better marks had increased. And 78% believed that student plagiarism was an increasing problem in their institution. A third (34%) believed reports of universities dumbing down were correct, while 82% said lack of resources were affecting academic standards.” 126
These results confirmed the findings of a previous Times survey of academics in 2004, in which:
“71% agreed that their ‘institution has admitted students who are not capable of benefiting from higher–level study’. Almost half reported that they had ‘felt obliged to pass a student whose performance did not really merit a pass’. A worrying 42% said that ‘decisions to fail students’ work have been overruled at higher levels in the institution’. Almost one in five admitted they had ‘turned a blind eye’ to student plagiarism.”127
This and other research suggests that, in private, many academics admit the reality of ‘dumbing down’. It also suggests that they feel unable to say anything about this in public.
Dumbing down
As the guardians of their own standards, universities can dumb down their courses in any way they see fit. But they have several preferred options. They can drop the marks required for different grades for an assessment. They can re–grade assessments after they have occurred to produce a more favourable result for all students. They can minimise the input and influence of the external examiners who are supposed to moderate and validate assessments. They can put pressure on staff to mark more generously. They can find methods for awarding marks that avoid assessment. Finally, they can simply give students the answers to their assessments.
At its worst, the Great Expansion subverts the assessment process into an informal collaboration between students and academics. This was encapsulated in a submission to the 2009 House of Commons Select Committee which was referenced in their final report:
“Dr Dearden said that academic standards had been compromised by, amongst other factors, management pressure on academic staff to fully utilise the range of marks and, in the extreme case, the threat of loss of teaching leading to staff priming students on exam content and he said that much of the compromise in standards was impossible to identify through formal monitoring procedures.”128
So, how do these approaches work in practice?
1. Dropping the pass marks for assessments
Traditionally, universities have had standard requirements in exam and assignment marks for degree grades. A First required a student to score 70% or above, whilst a student needed to score 40% or above in order to pass. However, the mark required for a First can vary by more than 20% between universities. There is also no longer any consistency about the threshold for failure. Susan Evans, a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, gave this evidence to the Select Committee:
“Under University regulations …students could not be compensated in a unit where the aggregate mark was less than 35%. However, students in this situation were allowed to progress. In 2005, eleven students with marks between 16% and 33% progressed to Year 2. In 2006, seventeen students with marks between 14% and 33% progressed to Year 2.”129
When students scoring 14% in an exam can achieve a pass grade, is there actually any point in having an exam? Why not save time, paperwork, ink and trees by removing the assessment altogether?
2. Re-grading assessments retrospectively
Sometimes re–grading can occur without the consent of the academic who provided the original marks. In 2008, Professor Paul Buckland, an academic at Bournemouth University, failed 25% of students on one of his courses. He later resigned in protest after the exams were re–graded and passed by another academic at the instigation of a university administrator. The case was eventually taken to an industrial tribunal at which Professor Buckland was found to have been unfairly dismissed.130
3. Reducing the influence of external examiners
The external examiner system involves a university inviting academics from other universities to scrutinise and moderate their exam and essay marks. This is intended to provide an independent and unbiased view of the quality of their students’ work and the consistency of marking. Examiners are normally given a number of clearly–graded exams to provide context and then a number of borderline cases to adjudicate. They write a report on their findings and then sign off all of the course marks before they are awarded by the marking university.
Professor Trainor, then head of Universities UK, described the external examiner system as “a jewel in the crown of UK quality maintenance” during his evidence.131 The Select Committee report wasn’t quite so certain, noting that: “We received evidence that indicated that this ‘jewel in the crown’ had become tarnished.”132 There are, in fact, numerous ways to circumvent the system.
One submission explained that: “External examiners are often friends of the module leaders and are frequently asked to scrutinise subject areas with which they are unfamiliar. They are not encouraged to pass adverse comments.”133
If an informal approach fails to produce the results required and external examiners are not amenable to suggestion, the university administration can unilaterally change the areas of scrutiny that an external examiner has responsibility for: “The external examiner does not monitor the general level of the marks [nor] is given the opportunity to change individual grades, since all he/she is called upon to do is to arbitrate between first and second markers and/or make a decision in borderline cases.”134 External examiners who don’t sign up for rubber–stamping duties can simply be replaced with other academics who are happy to pick up a day out with expenses in return for their collegiate assent.
4. Preventing internal dissent
It was clear from the evidence submitted to the Select Committee that many academics were deeply unhappy with the types of behaviours identified above, correctly identifying them as an attack on academic culture and values. To prevent wider expression of dissent, university managers can take steps to warn and, if necessary, punish individual academics. Specific tactics vary: from this appeal to the academics’ self–interest at Bournemouth University:
“I would urge all academic staff to look very carefully at those students gaining marks in the 30s. If the mark is 38–39 then please, where possible, look for the extra 1–2 marks if appropriate… I often reduce the problem to one of money ... each student brings an income of approximately £4,500. You can all do the sums as well as me to work out the likely implications for the school.”135
…to the ‘stick with no carrot’ approach favoured by Middlesex University which, as noted by the Guardian in 2004, had put in place a policy: “...of putting academic staff on the spot if 15% or more of their students fail a module. Staff have to explain the reasons for failure rates to a senior manager and report on remedial action. The university denied claims that it was putting pressure on staff not to fail too many students – particularly high fee–payers from overseas.”136
Alternatively, there can be a gentle steer in the right direction from a ‘more experienced’ academic, such as described by an anonymous academic writing in the Guardian:
“When a module leader suggested to me that I re–mark a batch of work and add 5 or 10 marks on to the original scores, I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. ‘Look at it as encouragement if you like,’ he said. ‘We give them good marks, they’ll work harder and they’ll achieve more.’ I wasn’t in a position to argue – this man was the person who gave me my teaching contract at a UK university every term. I told myself it was probably a one–off.. .. Except it isn’t a one–off. This kind of thing has happened again and again, at several Higher Education institutions.” 137
Given that speaking out against dumbing down can put an academic’s career prospects in jeopardy, it is hardly surprising that this issue requires anonymity before people are prepared to voice concerns. Many of the academics who submitted evidence to the Select Committee were either at the end of their careers, outside the main university system, or already in serious dispute with universities. The Select Committee report noted that those at the beginning of their academic careers (i.e. those with much more to lose) were also those who were most pressurised to collude in dumbing down: “Dr Fenton told us that staff who were vulnerable, especially younger members or newer members to the profession, who had not got as much clout, standing or protection within the institution [were] very nervous about speaking out, or recommending that certain students should not be getting certain grades.”138
5. Awarding marks to students in other ways
Some of the above unpleasantness is already being avoided by more forward–thinking universities. They award marks to students simply for turning up to classes and lectures: “…several universities had been found to be awarding 10% of marks if students attend all their lectures and seminars. They cited individual courses at Glasgow, Kent and Northampton universities.”139 Steve Smith, Vice Chancellor at Exeter University and then chair of Universities UK, defended these universities, stating that: “You don’t want to be in the situation where people pass a seminar–based course without attending,”140
This rather overlooks the question of why such a situation could arise in the first place. How could a student be able to pass a course without attending any classes? Two possible explanations suggest themselves. Firstly, that the classes were so dire that they made no impact on learning or, secondly, that marking on the course was so slack that class attendance might not really matter anyway. Of course, if universities wanted to boost class attendances whilst avoiding the perception of dumbing down, they could simply dock 10% of a student’s marks for not attending a percentage of classes, rather than awarding them for attending.
6. Giving students the answers
There has been a growing trend towards open–book exams in universities. In many cases, students can take in books and whatever other material they wish. This material is rarely checked beforehand by invigilators. With up to 500 students in an exam room, there simply isn’t time. If students take in exam answers written by other people in response to broad hints from their lecturers about potential questions, there is little to stop them from merrily copying these answers out.
In fact, some universities are even happy to relieve their students of the onerous task of actually copying out pre–prepared material. Consider this submission to the Select Committee, again from Sue Evans at Manchester Metropolitan University:
“In a computer–based statistics assessment that I invigilated the lecturer had already put some of the questions, together with the answers, on a common drive. Students could access the answers during the assessment and copy them into the document that they submitted for marking.” 141
On one level, we have to admire the entrepreneurial simplicity of this. If only a similar approach could be found for the delivery of lectures and seminars, then the whole resource–intensive business of Higher Education could be streamlined wonderfully. It is, of course, only one example. But perhaps it is indicative of a wider cultural shift in universities away from a community centred around learning and towards a bureaucracy centred on meeting its targets by any means necessary?
The above list does not include two other important aspects of dumbing down. Firstly, universities now routinely ignore industrial–scale cheating and, secondly, a dramatic reduction in the amount of material now studied in many degrees. Underlying each of these is a change in attitude within universities – a shift from traditional academic values and a search for knowledge towards a more utilitarian approach driven by financial considerations and a new corporate culture.
PART TWO: THE CONSEQUENCES
CHAPTER SIX: DEGREE FACTORIES
Unfortunately it seems that the attitudes and values of universities themselves have changed as a result of expansion. Many universities are themselves increasingly becoming mass–production degree factories focused on their own convenience, prestige and finances rather than on any abstract notion of spreading knowledge, educating the next generation and providing a ‘public good’.
A number of UK universities have, for instance, put money ahead of principle in their choice of business partnerships. A notable example of this was the involvement of the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Ghadaffi regime. But this is not an isolated incident. At St Andrews University, significant donations from the Syrian government were alleged to have influenced research at their Centre for Syrian Studies, making it more favourable to a regime synonymous with repressive brutality.142 While countries like Saudi Arabia, India and America have been traditional allies, during the last two decades we have also seen enlightened, forward–thinking, democratic countries such as Iran, Libya and Syria sending their children to study in the
UK. There is a wide and obvious gulf between Mahatma Gandhi studying Law at University College London and Saif Ghadaffi receiving a controversial doctorate from the LSE. Possibly moving further into the realms of the satirical, the University of Nottingham happily accepted millions of pounds from British American Tobacco to set up a Corporate Social Responsibility centre.143
This ‘degree factory’ approach is also discernible in falling standards. After all, grade inflation and dumbing down both enable universities to achieve their objectives with the minimum of effort and resource. Similarly, curriculum shrinkage sees universities teach less material on their degrees, despite increases in student fees. The growth and tacit acceptance of plagiarism aids and abets falling standards, whilst simultaneously reducing the workload of universities by removing the need to catch or discipline cheats. There is also evidence of a new student hierarchy, based not on academic merit, but rather on the amount of money they bring into the university. This, in turn, determines their treatment by the university, with processes from admissions to assessment now often driven by financial, rather than academic, considerations.