Does DD have any recourse with uni?

[Lismore]

Any legal thoughts very welcome….

DD should be graduating next week.

She sat 4 exams and did a dissertation for her finals and has received great marks in all except for one.

Due to the latest industrial action by lecturers, the fifth paper will not be marked until October at the earliest and possibly not at all (the uni has mooted that last year’s mark could be used instead).

She is so disappointed. They are planning to go ahead with a graduation ceremony but students won’t know their class of degree.

One overseas student she knows will have visa problems due to requiring a 2.i for a job offer.

After three years of disruption from lecturers (every year of her degree) and then COVID this feels like the final straw.

Does the uni have any contractual obligation to provide marked papers and a degree class by a certain time after the student sits their finals?

I honestly feel like encouraging her to do a class action or similar.

Argh! I typed out a long and calm (I think) response to both @Kirova and @SOWK then lost it.

Short version - it’s a shit storm all round and there doesn’t appear to be any easy short term resolution.

Students are being treated really unfairly.
Lecturers are also being treated really unfairly.
Support staff are being left to deal with all the crap which is not if their making (and probably also being underpaid as per the rest of the UK education system) which I suspect we all agree is unfair.

So who is gaining from this and how?

We attended DD’s ‘graduation’ which although lovely, had been rebranded as a ‘Celebration of the end of studies’ on the printed programme along with the ancient Latin words spoken by the master updated accordingly so a bit of a farce really.
DD has been given an empty A4 picture frame for her by her college! One of the professors suggested her exam will be marked by November so perhaps she’ll get a certificate to put in it by Christmas?!

This is interesting as mine is also at Cardiff. Papers submitted since April's MAB have been marked by external markers, all bar one which is unmarked. She will graduate this week with a 2.1, with a very small chance that final grade could be pushed up by an exceptional performance in the remaining unmarked paper.

My son back in 2021 had had only 4 months worth of 'proper' Uni from September 19 due firstly to lecturer action and then covid - he ended up thinking shove this and going back into work (work he was in before starting Uni) - his view was it was incurring vast amounts of debt for something he could have done on open university at 1/5th of cost.

I honestly think anyone at Uni from that early 20 to mid 21 period should get all the fees cancelled off!!!!

@CardiffMom so it’s not even consistent across departments potentially?! DD is on a joint honours degree so across 2 schools.

DD has 5 modules. 4 modules have all marks back. The final module has 2/3 results. It is one final exam missing. The other 2 marks in that module are 63% and 65%.

Yes I also feel sorry for the admin staff. The lecturers seem to have buggered off or not marked and the admin are left to do the mopping up.

DD has had an email with details of how to lodge a complaint and is being given £500 as compensation. So that'll be Mary in the office fielding complaints and Pat in accounts processing payments, to add to their no doubt massive workload. Hopeless.

I would not recommend uni as a viable option for anyone but the money-no-object very wealthy now.

My DD wrote to her Vice Chancellor soon after being notified of the strikes. Basically his reply was to sit tight and let the uni deal with it - they didn't want a degree with them undervalued. So two months later she graduated (with a letter of completion and apology). Before the ceremony started, it was stated they knew that particular wouldn't sit quietly during the ceremony and I half wonder if that's the reason the Vice Chancellor ducked out of the presentation.

I can't remember who's dealing with it, but I think there is a group legal action being brought. Obviously these things take time. In the meantime, some students are losing their visas, places on graduation schemes, job offers are being revoked. DD had an interview with a smaller employer who didn't know anything about the boycott and seemed very uncertain about the fact DD wouldn't have a degree.

I worked in the HE sector for 15 years and left 2 years ago (admin not academic). The sector is a complete mess, all as a result of central government decisions for the last decade. So if you have voted tory in that time your children are bearing the brunt of your political choices. Harsh but true.

That said, I feel so sorry for this year's cohort. Its going to be a struggle for them and employers aren't understanding.

I also feel for my ex colleagues, having to deal with irate students and their parents.

I've worked in this sector since 2019 and this has been truly the most stressful time I can remember, including the start of the pandemic! The amount of overtime I've done is just depressing, and unfortunately I don't feel we've even achieved very much.

I'm really sorry to hear that @Kirova , I have friends still in the sector and it sounds the same at every institution. I really hope things get better, for everyone.

Thanks - me too. It's just an all round frustrating situation. Like I said upthread, a lot of the communications and situations we're dealing with are very emotive, and it does wear you down after a while. I think lecturers are worried about their students' wellbeing too, but they are also not happy to ratify and award degrees when marking and results are incomplete or inaccurate.

Is it even possible that people have graduated but grades will later show they didn't pass? The dissertation is such a huge part of your overall classification.

What if they get the final results and didn't actually achieve the degree? I know people whose grades had them on course to at least get the degree but the dissertation ultimately failed them.

@bottleofbeer I think a lot of unis are holding ‘completion of study’ ceremonies rather than graduations to avoid this, so recognising that students have completed three years of study rather than focusing on the award. It is a risk with provisional results though and there may be students who progress to the next year of their course without passing the current year. Unis will need a policy to address that - are they allowed to continue or do they have to leave at the point results are known.

All the lecturers in DH dept marked work so their entire cohort is graduating. It was departmental more than individual University. He is in the union and has gone on strike many times but didn’t agree with messing up students futures. He is head of the dept and said his staff were so anti this strategy it was easy for him and no one fell out. His discipline means that graduates need to be a known quantity as some areas of what they do could end up killing people en masse.

I worked in public sector and then moved to higher Ed and worked for 25 years in it, I took early retirement as have three of my friends within the last few years. It’s a bloody shit show of epic proportions. Blair messed it up, truly, it’s not just the Tories.