When Professor Paul Buckland settled down
in his garden one summer's evening to mark exam papers from his
second-year archaeology students, he was expecting the usual range of
responses. But it soon became clear that the scripts had plummeted to
new depths of ignorance.
In one
paper, the decline of elm trees was attributed to diseases passed on by
dogs. Next, a student explained that the volcanic eruption in Pompeii
had "changed the pattern of human evolution". By the time he read that
farming caused smaller jaws in humans, his head was practically in his
hands.
The professor failed 18 out of the 60 papers he marked. And that was where his problems began.
For
three years, the academic has been embroiled in a conflict with
Bournemouth University over its decision to overule his professional
judgment on the standard of his students' work and increase their
scores.
The battle has effectively
ruined his career. At the lowest point, Professor Buckland was even
forced to ask his 89-year-old father for financial help.
But
last week, a decision by the Court of Appeal hopefully marked the end
of his ordeal. To the academic's immense relief, the court upheld his
contention that the south-coast university raised the grades of weak
students without his knowledge, and that his resignation, when it
refused to reinstate his marks, amounted to constructive dismissal.
But
the 62-year-old's nightmare has also cast light on a more widespread
issue that vice-chancellors steadfastly refuse to acknowledge. According
to Professor Buckland, a battle for standards is raging within parts of
the UK higher education sector.
On one side are academics anxious
to maintain quality and control over the courses they teach. On the
other are managers, generally in newer institutions, who regard students
as pots of cash and care more about recruitment and drop-out rates than
ensuring that students' marks reflect the work they do.
"The
implications go way beyond Bournemouth," said Professor Buckland.
"Before last week's ruling, the message sent out to universities was
that you could bully staff into upping grades – 'if you don't give the
marks we want, we'll get someone else to do it for us' – which is what
happened to me."
The saga began in 2006 when his department
decided to remark the papers the professor had failed – 14 after
students had resat – even though a second marker endorsed his scores, as
did the external examiner. On the basis of this fourth assessment,
scores were increased by up to six percentage points, moving several
students from a clear fail to a pass.
These were students, the
professor said, who after two years of an archaeology degree did not
know if the mesolithic age came before or after the neolithic.
"The
papers were farmed out to someone who didn't have the necessary
expertise and it was all done behind my back," said Professor Buckland,
who lives in Sheffield with his wife, Joan.
"It makes a mockery of
the entire system if the relevant expert in the field is not allowed to
return the marks. We get students who have to work damned hard to get
their degree. Then there are students who just drift through, spend most
of their times in bars, being given the same degree. It's an insult to
the people who have worked hard."
Over the last few years, as the
effects of the relentless expansion of student numbers in the 1980s and
1990s have been felt, evidence has been emerging of "dumbing down" in
some institutions.
The cases reveal staff under pressure to bump
up results and ignore rampant plagiarism by students. If the pass rate
is too low, lecturers are questioned by university examination boards,
regardless of a student's attendance or the amount of work they put in.
Any academic who sticks his head above the parapet to complain faces the
wrath of university authorities.
Walter Cairns, a law lecturer at
Manchester Metropolitan University, was kicked off the institution's
academic board last year when he revealed in a submission to MPs on the
universities select committee that 20 marks were added to the scores of
around 90 students studying international business law in 2005 because
their results were so bad.
Sue Evans, an economics lecturer at the
same institution, told the committee that marks were frequently revised
upwards without justification.
At De Montfort University, in
Leicester, internal documents revealed that the university had
"upgraded" a number of first- and second-year pharmacy students –
effectively lowering the pass mark on one course to 26 per cent – after
half of them failed their exams.
Staff who taught and marked the
papers said that some students were simply "not up to the rigours of the
programme" and, in many cases, "had a poor attitude to work".
Similar
concerns have been raised by lecturers at Hertfordshire, Teesside and
Central Lancashire Universities. Students are turning up on campuses
less well prepared than ever before. Even those with passable A-levels
are struggling to cope with the essay writing, book reading and
independent work required at degree level.
Many academics blame
the education students receive at secondary school. The argument is
familiar – exams are getting easier and a narrower curriculum is failing
to teach content which is crucial to further study.
Last week Sir
Mark Walport, the director of the Wellcome Trust, added weight to the
argument. His government-commissioned report found that multiple choice,
short answers and modular exams were damaging the study of maths and
science.
The knock-on effect is that academics in some
institutions are under increasing pressure to give undergraduates higher
grades than they deserve. A recent poll of 500 dons found that 77 per
cent felt coerced in to awarding inflated marks. Two thirds felt that
the increase in first-class and upper-second degrees was not a sign of
improving standards, and more than half said that reports that
universities were dumbing down "were not overstated".
Professor
Buckland, the first in his family, with his sister, to go to university
and a staunch supporter of higher education expansion, agrees: "We have a
ridiculous system where quality is gauged by the number of firsts you
award. When I taught geography in Birmingham in the 1980s we went for
three years without awarding a first. There was no complaint. A good 2:1
was recognised for the high-level qualification it was. Birmingham
recruited top-class students but in those particular years, they were
not quite the level of a first.
"If we did that now, there would
be a public inquiry. In the past a 2:2 was a credible degree, now it's
seen as almost the equivalent of a fail. That is an appalling situation.
British degrees are no longer valued in the way they were on the
continent."
A damning select committee report published last
summer said the system for checking university standards was "out of
date, inconsistent and should be replaced". It also accused
vice-chancellors of "defensive complacency" over the system and said
that whistleblowers, like Professor Buckland, needed more protection.
MPs
recommended that the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), which checks that
university procedures protect quality, be abolished or transformed to
give it powers to police teaching and degree standards. Not everyone
agreed with them, including Peter Williams, former head of the agency.
He said that a "Spanish inquisition" of the university sector, one of
the most successful in the world, was unwarranted.
More
importantly, an Ofsted-style university inspectorate would be expensive.
In an era of swingeing cuts to higher-education funding, pouring cash
into this quango is not on the agenda.
On Friday, Bournemouth
University decided not to appeal against the Court of Appeal ruling. In a
statement, it said that the case was a matter of employment law and not
a matter of academic standards.
"There is not and has not been an
issue over quality and standards at Bournemouth University," said a
spokesman. "The 2008 QAA audit said academic standards were sound."
For
Professor Buckland, the decision, which will mean substantial
compensation, could not come too soon. "It has been difficult for my
family, my wife," he said. "We've been living on savings and the small
amount of consultancy work I've got. I'm driving around in my father's
car.
"The system really does work on fear. If you had a young
family to support, you wouldn't be able to afford to put yourself in the
firing line."
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