A Level Results Day

[zefarelly]

Sadly, yes. The 'students as customers due to paying fees' regime, coupled with university managers' obsessing over 'student satisfaction' surveys and league tables (universities have gone the same way as schools; overmanaged, drowned under paperwork, and demoralised or frustrated staff leaving in droves) has meant pressure to award more 'high' degrees.

What would have been a high 2:2 about 20 years ago will now be a low-2:1, and we're instructed not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling or poor punctuation in case the student is Dyslexic.

At Open Days, prospective students actually ask what proportion of students graduate with a First, so if we say 7%,, they'll say "Oh, university X awards Firsts to 8% of its students, so I'll go there", and management will then tell us to award more Firsts to attract more applicants, and beat our competitors.

This is the 21st Century corporate business model university. Increased competition has not led to higher standards (as Conservatives and New Labour claimed), but instead a dumbing-down, 'all must have prizes' ethos. Meanwhile, university VCs are on £400,000-500,000 salaries, and 50% of student fee income goes on administration and management. In most universities, there are more bureaucrats than academics.

Academics detest this regime, in which universities are viewed as if they were no different to supermarkets or high-street pubs competing for happy customers, but it has been imposed on us by politicians (from all parties), and aggressively enforced by arrogant, swaggering, university managers who treat academics like sh*t; if we complain, we're told we're dinosaurs, and invited to apply for redundancy.

The whole stinking regime - thanks Thatcher and Blair - is about to collapse like a pack of cards, in which case, I'll take early retirement.

I had some of my O levels marked down . . . I had the papers back with marks crossed out and changed by a different pen. One went from 74% down to 69%

Zef Jr was told he needed a B in Maths . . . Or 150 points . . . He got 165 points and got into Uni automatically . . . Apparently a B required 167 points

 

[chip]

I have to say I disagree. I'm not sure that with the numbers involved there are 'clever' or 'thick' years statistically (and besides which, how could you tell if the exams are different each year that it's not simply hard or easy exam years ?)

However, as an employer, I would be more interested in whether I'm looking at one of the top 10%, 25% whatever in that year, rather than thinking is an A* today equivalent to an A from 20 years ago

But this is from someone who never got the chance to fail their A levels unlike those thick f***ers Clarkson and Humphrey. We had it hard back then

There are certainly years where the performance is lower than expected. Sometimes changes in A level syllabi or previous years in degree programmes affect specific modules. Sometimes, some year groups seem less engaged and perform worse across the year. This is the sort of thing we never have the time to investigate.

Lots of employers do ask for rank in year group but giving references is now not encouraged, especially on "headed paper". I did have the pleasure of describing one student as the best I had ever seen, which was nice

 

[essbee1]

Sadly, yes. The 'students as customers due to paying fees' regime, coupled with university managers' obsessing over 'student satisfaction' surveys and league tables (universities have gone the same way as schools; overmanaged, drowned under paperwork, and demoralised or frustrated staff leaving in droves) has meant pressure to award more 'high' degrees.

What would have been a high 2:2 about 20 years ago will now be a low-2:1, and we're instructed not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling or poor punctuation in case the student is Dyslexic.

At Open Days, prospective students actually ask what proportion of students graduate with a First, so if we say 7%,, they'll say "Oh, university X awards Firsts to 8% of its students, so I'll go there", and management will then tell us to award more Firsts to attract more applicants, and beat our competitors.

This is the 21st Century corporate business model university. Increased competition has not led to higher standards (as Conservatives and New Labour claimed), but instead a dumbing-down, 'all must have prizes' ethos. Meanwhile, university VCs are on £400,000-500,000 salaries, and 50% of student fee income goes on administration and management. In most universities, there are more bureaucrats than academics.

Academics detest this regime, in which universities are viewed as if they were no different to supermarkets or high-street pubs competing for happy customers, but it has been imposed on us by politicians (from all parties), and aggressively enforced by arrogant, swaggering, university managers who treat academics like sh*t; if we complain, we're told we're dinosaurs, and invited to apply for redundancy.

The whole stinking regime - thanks Thatcher and Blair - is about to collapse like a pack of cards, in which case, I'll take early retirement.

Academia is sick and I mean that in the ill sense.

 

[Goldstone1976]

My partner has just left academia 15 years after getting her PhD. I've been gently encouraging her to leave for 12 years due to its utter rancidness: her boss has no clue how to manage people - just utterly inept, and treated her as a gofer for what he wanted done. He'd say that he wanted to support her career development, but his actions showed the exact opposite. She spoke to colleagues about their bosses: 100% said their bosses were the same. 100%. That's not a bad apple, that's systemic failure.

I'm now encouraging her to take until the New Year to do nothing but de-stress from what has been a thoroughly miserable experience.

 

[Seagull58]

Well maybe, but how they grade people is a different issue to whether the qualifications themselves are worth less. It wouldn't help to know somebody's in the top 10% of a cohort if the course they'd done was shit anyway.

All the best people get 2:1s rather than firsts anyway.

This is demonstrably true.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Firsts are a sign of a wasted three years. The grades that those annoying 13 year old maths geniuses get, who can't relate to anything else.

At least I can spell methametoks.

 

[BrightonCottager]

It said on BBC news website that the grade boundaries in England are back to where they were in 2019. Also that this year 27.6% of grades awarded were A or A*.

I recognise many of the issues that @Peteinblack identifies in Universities, although have less direct experience of it. I would also add that academics now have to deal with students using AI to write assignments which constitutes academic misconduct (cheating). The software that students use to submit their work cannot detect AI, yet prompts us to use it to comment on the submission! We have to rely on a hunch, copying and pasting text into AI detectors.

 

[essbee1]

My partner has just left academia 15 years after getting her PhD. I've been gently encouraging her to leave for 12 years due to its utter rancidness: her boss has no clue how to manage people - just utterly inept, and treated her as a gofer for what he wanted done. He'd say that he wanted to support her career development, but his actions showed the exact opposite. She spoke to colleagues about their bosses: 100% said their bosses were the same. 100%. That's not a bad apple, that's systemic failure.

I'm now encouraging her to take until the New Year to do nothing but de-stress from what has been a thoroughly miserable experience.

Goldstone, I know I'm probably simplifying this a bit, but why did your partner leave it that long.
I strongly maintain that there are bigger ******* in academia than I ever met in industry. And there's
some right, "me big", step on others, aren't I important ***** in industry.

 

[tedebear]

My partner has just left academia 15 years after getting her PhD. I've been gently encouraging her to leave for 12 years due to its utter rancidness: her boss has no clue how to manage people - just utterly inept, and treated her as a gofer for what he wanted done. He'd say that he wanted to support her career development, but his actions showed the exact opposite. She spoke to colleagues about their bosses: 100% said their bosses were the same. 100%. That's not a bad apple, that's systemic failure.

I'm now encouraging her to take until the New Year to do nothing but de-stress from what has been a thoroughly miserable experience.

So sorry to hear that. I can echo what you are saying, I've met a few people in academia, who are rude, patronising and arrogant. They make the same comments about those they work for, then seemingly are doing it to those "beneath" them who they are supposed to be imparting their academic wisdom on....very bizare industry....Really pleased our son got into Sussex, but I'm of the get your degree and then use it in the real world mentality....rather than become part of the institution...I wish her well and hope she soon recovers from the trauma.

 

[Goldstone1976]

Goldstone, I know I'm probably simplifying this a bit, but why did your partner leave it that long.
I strongly maintain that there are bigger ******* in academia than I ever met in industry. And there's
some right, "me big", step on others, aren't I important ***** in industry.

In large part due to massive, totally unjustified, imposter syndrome. I say unjustified: 1st class honours degree from UCL, uncorrected PhD from KCL, papers in The Lancet and other well-respected journals, and a H index of 28. All that, and still massive imposter syndrome and an inability to say ‘no’. She knew exactly what she needed to do to advance her career, but was unable to stand up to the prof asking her to do stuff that advanced his career, at the expense of hers.

He was appalling; she didn’t have the make-up to do what she needed to do.

 

[beorhthelm]

My partner has just left academia 15 years after getting her PhD. I've been gently encouraging her to leave for 12 years due to its utter rancidness: her boss has no clue how to manage people - just utterly inept, and treated her as a gofer for what he wanted done. He'd say that he wanted to support her career development, but his actions showed the exact opposite. She spoke to colleagues about their bosses: 100% said their bosses were the same. 100%. That's not a bad apple, that's systemic failure.

I'm now encouraging her to take until the New Year to do nothing but de-stress from what has been a thoroughly miserable experience.

i've heard this from people i know in acedemia. thing that occurs to me is those managers are acedemics too. may be they just dont like doing the management bit?

 

[Goldstone1976]

i've heard this from people i know in acedemia. thing that occurs to me is those managers are acedemics too. may be they just dont like doing the management bit?

My vicarious experience is that they don’t want to manage, are psychologically unsuitable for management, and are untrained in management.

Nonetheless, they are managers.