AIBUto feel so angry with Dd's Uni

[Booklover123]

Dd taking her finals, first exam was today. Phoned me straight after distraught, as they had failed to provide the necessary appendices. Entire room were in tears, invigilators contacted dpt but to no avail.Were told to continue exam which they could not without the supplementary information! Tonight dd has received an e mail from said dpt "apologising for the error and mistake will be rectified". But how wii this be done? AIBU to be absolutely fuming with this utter balls up happening?

Similar happened to me in one of my final year exams. We were asked to plot a graph and using the scale given it wouldn't fit in the graph paper! Also, I can't remember exactly but they asked a question about a parabola which only made sense if it was a hyperbola. We were all furious and sent emails out to various people at the university and ended up with a mark of 94!! So they definitely compensated the marks somehow. So try to have faith, the lecturer won't fail all his students because of his own mistake.

I'd be pretty shaken if that had happened.
I can see why parents etc. are becoming more invested with the huge amount of fees to pay back. I did feel that my experience at university was marred by supervisors etc. who couldn't give a shit and relied on the reputation of the university.
I felt that at university it was more "suck it up." Sorry, they are to some extent providing a service and YANBU to complain. The stakes are too high.
Rectifying it would be a resit, not a shaky attempt at adjusting grade boundaries.

Bit of a cross post with Janet there!

what about the student for whom this would have been the best paper?

Well, students might think that, but when I look at a run of marks for a student, from 1st to 3rd year, and recorded against modules, I can generally see a pretty consistent pattern. Students will very rarely average, say 55% throughout their degree, and then suddenly pull a 65% out of the bag in an exam.

Learning is cumulative and iterative. That's why cramming is never as effective as learning and reflecting on learning, and then testing that learning via assessment, steadily, throughout a degree programme.

That's interesting goat's feet.

It may depend on the degree subject I expect - I can certainly think of some degree subjects where different students will have different stronger and weaker "sub-subjects". So it's not that you a student will suddenly do better in an exam than in course work, but that s/he is significantly stronger in one area than another.

I agree that someone good might well have good marks in most papers. However it would be a lot fairer if these mistakes were not made in the first place. Given what some of us are now paying (plus the massive taxes we pay in addition plus the amount we are asked to pay to our old universities who seem to email me every month asking for money which makes me feel lke I pay 3x - funding the children 100% (£19k a year for the twins plus rent), paying huge income taxes about 50% plus indirect taxes and thirdly any donations) I hope universities can do all they can to ensure these kinds of mistakes don't occur.

Some of the comments on here are downright nasty. I did my Finals back in 1984 but can well imagine being reduced to tears by such a cock up and I have a backbone. My DS is doing his Finals now & I too would be outraged. So much work, so much money, and at the time it's the most important thing in the world.

These sorts of mistakes are made very rarely. Read some of the posts up thread where academics outline the numbers we deal with every year. And process accurately, so that students can graduate in July.

It's not as if this sort of mistake is made at every exam, although some of you seem happy to pretend that this happens.

These mistakes are extremely rare, there are 1000's of students sitting 100's of exams often in one or two weeks of the year, each with a different student number, different modules/papers to take, many with individual learning plans (on average, I'll have several students in several separate rooms due to anxiety/learning difficulties not able to go in, or need to use computer, plus all the labels for dyslexia etc). It's a miracle it runs as well as it does.

We have a very stringent procedure for checking papers and mark-schemes, and have to be 'on call' during the exam, and there are also stringent and documented procedures if things go wrong, which involve the Exam Board and the external examiners. As everyone has said a million times, if there is one exam that is incorrect in any way, this cannot then be the deciding exam for that student. It will either be discounted or the grades substantially increased.

We don't just make it up as we go along you know.

Plus if we were always looking to mark students down/be harsh, how would the much maligned 'grade inflation' have occurred? The students are often marked up when on boundaries (e.g. on 69%) these days. I don't even agree with this, but your children will benefit with all their 2:1s or firsts that have now been somewhat devalued by this slight over-generosity at the margins!

I fund the fees and just like in their private school I am the direct customer

Nope. It's not just like in their private school. You might be the finance behind the fees but the university's contract is with the student, not the parent.

Shatners: My friend is a psychiatrist and does a lot of counselling. He would say that in his profession, it's also about relationships and the development of the individual. Those who visit him are called clients or patients but they're customers. They pay a fee, he provides a service.

But there is no end product guaranteed. No guarantee of any change or personal growth.

A degree is yours if you put the work in. It's not guaranteed, nor are the opportunities that a degree opens up for you.

I fund the fees and just like in their private school I am the direct customer

Of course you're not.

I work in HE and have seen a huge rise in medical rhetoric amongst students. It would be students were 'a bit nervous' about a presentation. Now they've 'got heightened anxiety' and refuse to do the assessments I appreciate anxiety is a very real issue for some but students come out with these statements on a regular basis about quite basic requirements.

You know what I mean. I am about to commit £150k to the twins over 3 years to fund them at university. I agree it is not "just like" because they have turned 18 but I give the money to them to pay the university so they are buying the various services not me. I am not complaining about the services. So far the adult children in the have 12 years of university I have paid across the older ones have done fine. However we obviously all hope mistakes aren't made.

Of course 'we all hope mistakes aren't made'. I can tell you for free that the staff involved in this error will be mortified. And that would be true regardless of how much the students had paid in fees. There is a common misconception that because of the higher tuition fees, universities must have more money, which should be spent on providing first class services for students. In reality, the majority of universities are struggling financially and making redundancies, because the increase in tuition fees have been introduced to compensate for significant cuts in government funding for universities.

There was a mistake made by one of the invigilators during the final exam in my University. One of the students complained and it was taken very seriously, as some of the students were going on to do LLBs. It was rectified during the exam, after consultation by phone to the exam body (a different university). I went to university in Ireland.

Yes, your daughter is right to be concerned but should put it to one side for now and concentrate on the other exams. Hopefully, it will be rectified.

I can tell you for free that the staff involved in this error will be mortified.

Absolutely! I can remember as a very junior tutor, I thought I had lost an exam script from the bundle I was marking (I did have around 100 mind you). I didn't sleep for 2 days as I tuned my office and my house upside down to find it. It had slipped behind my desk at home. Whew!

in reality, the majority of universities are struggling financially and making redundancies, because the increase in tuition fees have been introduced to compensate for significant cuts in government funding for universities

The THE reported last week of an overall drop in academic salaries of around 5.5% And the University of Manchester is about to sack almost 200 academics.

Mistakes happen if humans are involved. It is how they are dealt with and how often it happens that matters. I wonder what kind of job those who are outraged by a single mistake do if they think it is possible to never make one.

This kind of mistake could have happened in the exam hall by whoever put the exam papers out. Although at our uni lecturers are required to attend the exam and check the paper at the beginning and stay for 20 mins of the exam in case of any issues.

Goats Genuine question. If you feel very few students will suddenly improve in one exam and when mistakes are made universities and confidently allocate a mark based on their consistent performance over the course, isn't that an argument to say "why bother with exams at all?" and get tutors and lecturers to continually assess their students and award them an appropriate "mark" at the end of the course?

isn't that an argument to say "why bother with exams at all?" and get tutors and lecturers to continually assess their students and award them an appropriate "mark" at the end of the course?

Good question ShatnersWig. My department doesn't do these sorts of exams: unseen & timed. We have other ways of testing students' learning on their feet and under stress. We use practical testing, vivas, presentations and so on. We offer a variety of assessment styles to try to ensure we cover students' diverse learning styles, and not favour one style of learning and demonstration of that learning over others. (Although in current discussions with undergrads about some of their demands re our programme, we are mentioning the "traditional exam" as a possibility - it's making them reflect more responsibly on the current range of assessment types, and see the merits in them!)

However, exams can be useful in a number of ways. They ensure that students aren't getting inappropriate help like the mother of a student of mine who pretty well wrote his essays or plagiarising or buying essays from a criminal essay mill. Although I am continually shocked by the underhand cheating that goes on. I sit on a disciplinary panel outside my own Faculty, and every year we interview cheating students. The lengths they go to are shocking, and frankly, disgusting. A tiny minority, thankfully. If it were up to me, I'd chuck them out without a degree, but usually the disciplinary response is simply to drop the degree classification by one grade - so a 2,i becomes a 2, ii and so on.

It's better not to cheat, basically. But we are overly lenient on cheats & plagiarisers in my view. Hmmm, this is the other side of this whole thread, isn't it? The real crimes of a tiny minority of students. But there are more deliberately cheating students, than administrative/academic errors, frankly.

Anyway ... Exams can also model 'real world' situations in some ways: a big 20 page document lands on your desk - your boss says, "I need a 1 page summary, and a 1 page outline of a draft response by Friday" - there's an exam-style situation. Or a barrister's brief, or a complex legal contract.

Exams can test the understanding of material under stress - a good thing for engineers, doctors, and nurses, I'd have thought?

Goats I think in some professions, I agree that the understanding of material under stress is essential. But I can think of many more for which is wouldn't matter at all. Interesting.

I am currently working on our universities medical examinations (OSCE's and written) and you cannot imagine the work and man hours that go into making sure something like this doesn't happen.
The planning began at Christmas and there is a team of 15 of us who meet weekly to ensure everything is going to plan and put plans in place incase anything goes wrong.

Last week we had the final year exams and a small error (made by central university exams, not the department, I may add) was discovered 45minutes before the start of the exam. Me and all of my colleagues dropped what we were doing and did everything we could to rectify this, for some of us this meant driving to a nearby town where some of the students were sitting the exam. During exam season it is very common for my team to work extra hours, come in on days off, take phone calls from home etc...to make sure everything gets done. Not everyone is like this but it does upset me when parents think we don't give a shit. I've seen these students through 5 years of ups and downs and we attend every graduation to see them walk across that stage.

We would NEVER put students at a disadvantage because of a department/university cock up. I can fully believe people were in tears, I've dealt with students having panic attacks just waiting to go into an exam. We do genuinely care about our students and I can guarantee the staff involved will have been mortified and upset and it wont be taken lightly.

I hope it all works out for your DD.

But I can think of many more for which is wouldn't matter at all

Exactly - I think then it is about making sure students hand in their own work. But increasingly - in the humanities at least (my field) - we offer a wide range of assessment types. So students are actually assessed more! And throughout their degree, rather than at the end.

Although, I had a tutor at my alma mater (very old, world-leading university, blah blah) who had quite a radical, but rational view on this - he used to say in favour of Finals, that it's quite reasonable to assume that a student knows more at the end of 3 years than at the start of their 2nd year, and that continuous assessment has its drawbacks in this respect.

Thankyou for your kind comments stinky and all the other insightful mumsnetters, I am pleased that it hasn't turned into a bun fight as I feared on the first few pages. I am so grateful and reassured for all your helpful comments and it has led to such a lively debate. Dd is now preparing for exam finals number3 tomorrow morning. Touch wood all has gone smoothly since the debacle on Tuesday!