Tuesday, June 17, 2008

University Degrees dumbed down?

Professor Geoffrey Alderman will be giving a lecture later in which he will argue that university degrees are becoming easier as the marking schemes are becoming more lenient.

This article in the Independent broke the story last night, whilst the BBC carries this.

The allegations fall into several categories. Firstly plagiarism is not punished, secondly badly written answers are not penalised and thirdly there is a wild growth in the number of first class degrees that are being awarded.

Having spoken to university and other higher education lecturers over many years I can tell you that the standard of the input to university and higher education has been in decline. That is that A level students and their equivalent are less well versed in their subjects than they used to be. This trend started in the late 1980's but has accelerated. That the input should be declining whilst the output is rising in simply untenable.

The reason for the selling short of degrees? League tables. Brilliant.

No comments: