I'm all for Freedom of Information. The Government's certainly doing its bit, with ministers' laptops full of sensitive information being mislaid and potentially released into the public domain. Now Manchester Metropolitain University has egg on its face following the 'leak' of an email regarding 'degree inflation'.
The email, sent to Mathematics and Computing staff by the department's Academic Standards manager noted, "As a university we do not award as many Firsts and 2.1s as other comparable institutions so there is an understandable desire to increase the proportion of such awards. Please bear this in mind when setting your second and final year assessments, especially the latter."
In case any staff were worried that someone outside might notice falling standards, the email continued, "We have never received any external examiner criticism that our 'standards' are too low so there should be quite a lot of leeway available to us all when assessments are set."
So there it is, not only are British universities awarding postgradute degrees to financially-desirable but academically-challenged overseas students, they're making undergraduate degrees easier to make them more attractive to applicants.
The blog on the BBC News site has attracted much comment, and one contribution, from an employer, sums it up nicely:
"I am an employer who usually recruits degree level staff. Assuming you are getting an education to get a good job, like it or not, at the end of the day it's the opinion of people like me that counts. And this is the actual grading system in use:
1st - Candidate actually tried & is at least reasonably intelligent.
2:1 - Candidate turned up for many of their lectures and did a bit of work.
2:2 - Mostly didn't even show up as too hammered from SU bar.
3rd - No one puts this on their CV, they simply say they passed. in our opinion they failed miserably and it is worse than them having nothing.
If Unis continue to try to be smart Alecs with the grading we'll simply lose all faith in the system and soon a whole new industry will grow up around intelligence testing for recruitment :-)"
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