Universities 'dumb down' and ignore cheating, MPs told
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Independent Minds
Universities should be stripped of their powers to award degrees if evidence emerges that they have "dumbed down", MPs heard yesterday.
Professor Geoffrey Alderman, the former academic chairman who caused uproar last year by claiming lecturers were under pressure to "mark positively" and turn a blind eye to plagiarism, told a Commons Select committee monitoring higher education that there had been a "systematic failure" to maintain degree standards for the past 20 years.
"In particular, vice-chancellors have permitted and indeed encouraged the decline in academic standards in the desperate search for (a) increased income from 'full cost' fee-paying international students, (b) more favourable student retention rates, and (c) high or higher positions in various 'rankings' or 'league tables' published by a variety of media," Professor Alderman said.
"Failing or expelling a non-European Union student can have serious knock-on implications as the word gets out. In the modern, mass higher education system, it seems, there must be prizes for all because the student is the customer and the customer must walk away with something for his or her money."
He said the only way to sustain standards was to give tougher powers to the sector's watchdog, the Quality Assurance Agency, to crack down on universities. "The current situation, whereby universities enjoy degree-awarding powers in perpetuity, is insupportable," he said."Where an institution is found to be derelict in its supreme duty to maintain standards ... financial penalties should be levied, followed, if necessary by the partial or complete withdrawal of the authority to award degrees."
He added: "The decline in academic standards has been facilitated by weak or non-existent survellance of them. Students who would formerly have failed their degrees are being passed and students who would formerly have been awarded very respectable lower seconds are now being awarded upper seconds and even firsts.
"Students – I mean British students as well as students from overseas – 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 at the ouset of their studies. Cheating is rampant, encouraged in part by lenient penalties."
He cited figures to show that the number of firsts awarded by universities had doubled in the past decade, while the student population had gone up by less than half. In addition, a survey by the Higher Education Academy had revealed 9,000 cases of plagiarism in the past year, only 143 of which had resulted in expulsion.
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Comments
To attempt to solve this problem by even closer monitoring of the performence of universities, having already deprived them of adequate goverment funding, is merely to add insult to injury.
Back off and let them get back to doing their work and they will gladly do it. Trust me, no academic revels in having to overlook stupidity and reward cheating... unfortunately, in today's academic "market place" they are urged to do both.
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blo
The government operates on the counter-factual assumption that:
1. All races are endowed with the same intellectual capacities.
2. "Under-privileged" students from "deprived inner-city areas" are the victims of white institutional racism. Otherwise, they would win as many educational plaudits as everybody else.
3. "White institutional racism" is rampant in university entrance procedures, so universities must be forced to accept the aforementioned "under-privileged" students.
Of course, if anyone in the Department of Education accepted the science on hgeritable IQ and racial difference, none of this would be going on, and dumming-down by universities to accomodate it would not be necessary.
So, Prof Alderman, are you brave enough to cause a real bit of uproar and explain that the left's attachment to a non-existent racial equality is destroying the fabric of British education.
The government operates on the counter-factual assumption that:
1. All races are endowed with the same intellectual capacities.
2. "Under-privileged" students from "deprived inner-city areas" are the victims of white institutional racism. Otherwise, they would win as many educational plaudits as everybody else.
3. "White institutional racism" is rampant in university entrance procedures, so universities must be forced to accept the aforementioned "under-privileged" students.
Of course, if anyone in the Department of Education accepted the science on heritable IQ and racial difference, none of this would be going on, and dumming-down by universities to accomodate it would not be necessary.
So, Prof Alderman, are you brave enough to cause a real bit of uproar and explain that the left's attachment to a non-existent racial equality is destroying the fabric of British education.
She failed it at school, spent three years at college with extra tuition and still failed.
Where is the motivation for our brightest pupils when the mediocre are allowed to get accepted for degree level education.
It cheapens the whole thing.....Bums on seats = funding ????
At A level, 97% pass and 25% get an A; 20 years ago, from a more select and brainy group, 30% failed and 6% got an A. Hull university research shows that an E at maths A level wo years ago waould now get an A. And GCSEs can be passed with 20%. Marking and coursework and designed to pass everyone.
Similarly at universities, a C grade 20 years ago would now get a B or an A; plagiarism is ignored; all students cheat because they rewrite their essays under tutors' guidance (that used to be called cheating) and the whole thing is a scam.
Education is just a business, and no-one should trust anyone's qualifications any more. Employers don't for sure.
To have winners there must be losers - othewise the value of success is diminished. THAT is something the 'everyone's a winner' beancounters will never understand.
The emperor is stark naked - and it's about time we listened to the little boy.
I first graduated 20 years ago, and secondly last year from the Open University. I found the second degree to be every bit as demanding as the first, and I'm now doing a further degree which is more demanding still, and for which every piece of written work is electronically checked for plagiarism, which is still academic offence no.1. If things had dumbed down so much, I should be able to pay a handsome sum and casually pick up a master's degree, but this is not possible (excluding the Oxbridge anachronism, of course ;-)
So where's the evidence? Is it dumbing down across the board, "all (who stump up the cash) shall have prizes", or is this broad-brush criticism intended to mask differences between old and new universities, useful and useless subjects, real research measured in number of citations or vanity research measured in Kg? I'd love to know.
As an aside, I'm not in the UK. The intergovernmental organisation for which I work (not the EU) has people from all over Europe, but the UK is badly under-represented. We can't find suitable UK staff, in particular those who have ANY knowledge of foreign languages, although many other countries seem to be able to produce them. What could possibly be the cause of that? Just a thought ...
If we are appointing dumb lecturers, it stands to reason that they will award high grades for lousy work, because they simply have no idea what quality work looks like.
I read students' essays most days - and Masters essays too. A lot of Masters students are clueless - especially foreign students. But then, a lot of British undergraduates are clueless too. No-one should ever believe any more that just because someone has a qualification in something they know about it: it doesn;t follow any more.
The whole thing is a joke, but anyone who just plods along through the various stages on the way to being a lecturer will get there. One must also acknowledge that newer universities and older universities are about as similar as Acrington Stanley and Manchester United.
American students also sit SAT subject tests, and Advanced Placement exams (deemed by UCAS to be equivalent to either an A or AS level depending on the subject) if they wish to apply to the competitive "top" universities. A high number of universities are this competitive.
On top of this, American students have to provide a full transcript of all high school grades showing a cumulative grade point average. They sit tests and quizzes constantly at school. Maths, science and foreign language are taken up through the final years of high school.
Yes, there are many pitiful state schools here with appalling standards. For those students though who wish to attend a reasonable or "top" university, it`s hard work.
The GCSE and A level system requires very early specializaton, encourages cheating with coursework, and accounts for the low numbers of students taking"hard" subjects such as science and foreign language. Even students obtaining three or four A levels cannot be considered "well-rounded" in a classical sense. American students are increasingly taking the IB programme alongside their high school diploma as the content is quite similar. IB looks like the solution to the education woes in England.
Why is this? I put most of the blame on politicians, who want mass-market education on the cheap and don't understand that by its very nature Higher Education should be reserved for an elite who can truly benefit from it. We now have FE pretending to be HE. Secondary blame attaches to university senior management, who now seem to act like managers rather than senior academics.
Tertiary blame for lecturers, who have kept quiet about this for too long?
The solution? Bring back real O-levels and real A-levels, run by universities with no interference from the government. A-levels could then regain their proper status as university entrance exams. Bring back the binary divide, abolished as a populist measure by John Major in 1992 - but don't assume that the line will be drawn in the same place, as some ex-polys may have higher standards than some 1960's universities. Ban coursework. Anyone who can find a place can go to HE, but the state only funds the top 20% of students.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dumbin