To Complain to University

[UniversityUnfair]

I have just finished my degree and as part of the celebrations I chatted to another student and found out that on a module I hadn't taken, a professor was off ill so they had their essays marked on quantity as there was no one available to mark them (up to a cap of 80%).
They were told this was going to happen and as a result everyone handed in 80,000 word essays and received distinction level degrees.
I got a merit, and I'm now smarting as an 80 would have gotten me a distinction and helped towards applying for the MA, the competition is now very high as more than half of the cohort got distinctions because of this situation.
AIBU to complain? I think it would burn bridges in the dept, so I couldn't take my MA there which would be a shame as I've built friendships and working relationships here. Also I think it would be unfair for those essays to be marked now as those students were told to hand in quantity over quality so probably didn't give their all.

I work in a college and we often joke we could mark BTEC folders pass/merit/distinction by the weight of the folder! In my experience this would be about 90% accurate- but we don’t do it, of course. It sounds like a mutant version of a comment like that.

I have worked in universities for almost 20 years. This didn't happen!

Do you really think prior to submitting their essays they were told there would be no one available to mark them?!? But just write as much as you can for the best possible mark?!

Everyone then managed to produce a 80,000 word essay - everyone, despite any other essays/deadlines etc that they had. Then purely based on word count alone, got a distinction level mark for that one module.

That one mark was then so magnificent that it then gave them all overall distinction on their degree classification.

And the whole administrative and governance side of the university thought this was totally fine and it was all signed off.

Yup, definitely happened!!

I'm a lecturer too. An 80,000 word essay is the size of a PhD. If a lecturer was off ill someone else would have marked the assessment. There's no way an external examiner or an internal moderator would have signed this off - a string of A grades and assessments that went WAY beyond the word count? It's just not plausible.