New Statesman article - value of UK degrees

[damekindness]

I recognise much of this from my own university - just wondered if this rang true for others? I'm a bit ambivalent about it however as the alternative is to return to an elitist past where the privileged few accessed higher education.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/education/2019/08/great-university-con-how-british-degree-lost-its-value

Other issue is it makes older people look thicker!

It devalues older degrees.

Not surprised, as many of them waltz out with degrees despite having submitted nothing but substandard work. However these days we are forced to bow down to the power of the ' student voice' and satisfy their every demand.

Obviously there are still students who want to work, but there are many, too many, who do hardly anything and still get a pass due to the pressure we are under to pass them regardless.

I worked in the University sector at the time of rapid expansion in the noughties.

It was really blindingly obvious that this would be one of the outcomes.

It was also really obvious that some of the marketing claims about lifetime earnings and where a degree might take someone afterward would not match the experience of the post-expansion cohorts.

I don’t recognise the anecdote about the re-mark as that just wouldn’t happen in most universities that I’m familiar with, all of which state very firmly that students can’t appeal academic judgment.

But I do agree about grade inflation, absolutely. No one seems to get a 2:2 degree anymore, in my experience. And, no, it’s not because students are getting better and working harder. Quite the opposite. My university deliberately manipulated the mark scale a few years ago to ensure grade inflation. But when you’ve got league tables and metrics focused on “value-added”, it encourages this sort of thing. Take weak students and inflate their marks and you’re sailing up the league tables.