Marking & Assessment Boycott

[aridapricot]

So how do you think this will pan out this time? Are you taking part? How do you think things will go in your university/department?
My uni is docking 30% pay. Also in my department (where the spirit tends to be "yes we'll do whatever UCU asks us to do but we'll also go out of our way to cause any inconvenience to students") people are already talking about mitigations... 🙄I am not a UCU member and won't be taking part but I also fear that at some point I will be asked to cover colleague's marking or (even worse) redistribute it (given that I'm HoD).

I think the points above about the experience of COVID mitigations limiting the impact of MAB is sound. My sense is also that to be really effective MAB needs quite widespread compliance- you need a critical mass of impacted modules and students.

At my institution the branch was fairly strategic and targeted a handful of modules (the thinking being I think that this would minimise financial impact on boycotters while maximising the impact). But it hasn't worked out like that. There's maybe 200 students with missing marks, all in humanities, but most are only missing 15/30 credits so it's not impeding progression/graduation. It's just caused huge amounts of work for (mainly) PS staff. But the end impact on students is actually pretty minimal, so I don't think it's made University management more likely to capitulate. If anything, I'd say the opposite: it's pissed them off and eroded their sympathy.

All the affected modules are in humanities departments which have falling student numbers and rising deficits. I imagine if the Business School were hit, it might have a different impact, but I worry that MAB in humanities just provides further reason for management not to continue to subsidise struggling departments.

Yes, at my institution the VC is actively targeting a couple of departments where the MAB has been strongest.

My institution sent an e-mail a few months ago saying that only 10% of staff were taking part in the MAB. Which doesn't mean anything without context, a lot of staff are research-only or don't have marking responsibilities and so depending on which 10% it is it could have a significant impact. On the ground there is generally a climate of little transparency - no one wats to admit whether they are taking part in MAB or not, whether they're being impacted by it or not -, which to me adds considerably to the stress and uncertainty. I don't know if there are other HoDs in my position, the few ones I know about do not seem to be facing the same complications. We offer join honours degrees at my place and when dealing with a couple of the "joint" subjects they almost implied it was my fault that students were graduating with incomplete marks as "they" have completed all their marking.

One of UCU’s obstacles to the MAB being more effective is its lack of penetration in the sector. I think nationwide around 20% of academics are in UCU. Assuming that they have participated (which I doubt), the impact clearly isn’t enough to move the employers.

I see that they are planning a big recruitment drive in the new academic year. With their track record (plus their stance on Ukraine and freedom of speech), I cannot see that they will improve on that 20% unless they open up membership to master’s students.

One more thought - the fact that UCU has greater levels of penetration among Arts and Humanities kind makes the whole idea of the MAB backfire. Not only because it tends to be small numbers of students compared to STEM, Business, etc. Many Humanities academics have spent the last years arguing that there isn't any fixed content that all students of a given discipline should learn, there shouldn't be a canon, if you replace Beethoven with Justin Bieber it doesn't make any difference as long as the students are learning "critical skills"... Now I read many of these people making the argument that students will graduate without having been properly assessed on extremely important bits of knowledge, and it honestly makes me want to laugh.

I haven't heard that. The complaint from MABers in many institutions is that the work has been marked by nonexperts, with none of the oversight we have always been told was essential. For research-led modules, that's dire.

UCU is led by a humanities graduate (I believe Grady is a historian of the trade union movement by training) - is it mostly populated by humanities and social science graduates? Do we have any data? If yes, that would be another motivation for employers to shut down humanities departments, no?

I don’t really think A-level students will base their choice of subject solely on union penetration of their prospective discipline but you’re unlikely to encounter much industrial action as a student if you go for an economics degree …

Grady’s PhD: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.617803

That’s an awful lot of typographical errors in a thesis abstract!

Now I understand why Dr. Grady has no problem with circular logic or the simplistic theory that bad things in the world are caused by bad ideas …

Oh god is this a dare as to how many times you can repeat the word "neoliberal" in an abstract??

Yes, that's what we're most worried about too. Even having 2nd markers' grades for dissertations taken as the only grade has risks - often 2nd markers are more critical than supervisors, if that's how the marking is set up in a particular institution. Fortunately in our dept we have no reason to think that academic integrity is being damaged - yet. Our regulatory body takes a dim view of non experts marking, so we have that to fall back on.

I just want this all to be over and get on with my job :(

UCU is led by a humanities graduate (I believe Grady is a historian of the trade union movement by training) - is it mostly populated by humanities and social science graduates? Do we have any data?

UCU membership is certainly much higher in humanities and social sciences. In terms of participation in MAB, I know of at least three RG institutions where the MAB participants come entirely from humanities and specific parts of social sciences.

Ha, one of them could be mine. In my faculty we've barely got any modules fully marked while a friend in the Maths department told me that not one person has gone out on strike.

I'm not sure if I'm welcome to join, since - full disclaimer - I am PSS, not academic. To be specific, I'm what they call a "caseworker" (i.e. death by appeals).

Talks sound like they've been unprofitable today.

Not meeting again until next Thursday.

Whilst the rest of us lose salary for another week. Happy f*cking weekend to us.

I'm sorry @SchnitzelVonCrummsTum . UCU are always somewhat triumphalism so their tweet (https://twitter.com/ucu/status/1682426202605142019) makes me think it's really pretty bad.

This does not sound good at all. UCU threatening to continue the boycott. If the MAB does not end soon, there will be all sorts of grave repercussions, for students, academics, the disciplines most affected and universities in general. Maybe I’m being too glum, but I think this could put quite a few people’s jobs on the line??

We’ve just been asked for our summer resit papers. I guess this where the assessment boycott kicks in. If this continues into the new academic year I can’t imagine how the universities will respond. I suppose they will resort to 100% final exams, which won’t be popular.

I also don’t understand what exactly is going on with the negotiations at present. There seem to be different views on Twitter - is it about returning strike deductions (this seems weird and unlikely) or MAB deductions or is it about resuming talks? I don’t think they are substantive negotiations in any case.

In my place, they firsts "graduated" the finalistss around mid/late June, which wasn't that bad, but then they moved into progression for other years - which would normally also be finished by mid-June but couldn't. We're still working on this and this week I realized much to my dismay that re-sits are coming in 2 weeks time. Then it will start again - graduations, progression, and this time with PG added into the mix as dissertations and graduations are due in September. This will then lag on until December or so when we have another exam period and exam boards. I am not sure if UCU intended this but I have to admit a MAB is a completely genius move to create chaos and let it go forever, with professional services and non-striking staff getting burn out in the process and presumably putting pressure themselves on management.

I'm PS and I can confirm that it has been pretty awful - although my department has been one of the worst impacted. Interestingly we already had a few academics confirming that they will mark resits/deferrals - ones who were participating in the MAB this far. I'm not sure what that might indicate.

I'm moving to work in admissions in autumn and can't work out whether I'm saving myself or heading out of the frying pan and into the fire!

I’m a HoD, or was until I had a complete mental breakdown. I’m now signed off work for the foreseeable with stress. There was two years of utter shit which built up to it, but the MAB was undoubtedly the thing that pushed me past breaking point. Now one of the other professors in my department gets to no doubt be driven to that same point by it all. I don’t think there’s going to be any coming back from this in terms of colleague relationships.

Very sorry to hear this, GC. Always appreciate your contributions on these boards and hope you recover soon.

What was it in particular that pushed you over the edge? (Sorry for asking if you’d rather not say.)

Oh I am so sorry to hear this @GCAcademic . I am also HoD and this week I was ready to submit my resignation letter, now I am having a chat with my line manager next week instead. Please look after yourself and focus on recovering.

Thanks @ExUCU

It was the sense of colleagues directing their action at you (and some of them went way beyond simply boycotting assessment, some of the behaviour was truly hideous), and then also having students and parents angsting at you (understandable) plus management putting the pressure on to set exam papers, mark assessments, etc.. HR then poured fuel on the situation with threats of disciplinaries.

But, as I mentioned, there was two years of horror before this, and I might have been better able to cope with the situation if I wasn’t already exhausted and burnt out (and also managing a chronic health condition).

I’m sorry to hear about your situation too @aridapricot . I hope your line manager is supportive. Mine is now that I’ve been made ill by the role but the support came too late in the day. There is really poor support for HoDs. Before taking on this role I’d never imagined the unrelenting shit that you’re expected to deal with.

It makes me laugh Jo Grady continuing to encourage this will no real movement on anything for people not affected by pensions. Alright for her on her £100k plus salary.