A degree of pointlessness

Anastasia De Waal, 24 October 2008

A variation on the usual theme, the pantomime over ‘dumbed down’ standards between ministers and critics was this week played out in higher education. In a similar vein to what the government like to condemn as the ‘annual carping’ around rising school exam grades, the rising number of first-class and 2:1 undergraduate degrees is being attributed to ‘inflation’ rather than improvement. However as in this instance it is those actually marking the papers who are the critics, it’s a little more difficult for the government to refute.

According to a poll by the Times Higher Education (THE) magazine, a striking 77 per cent of the 500 university academics surveyed said that they had felt ‘coerced’ into awarding higher degree grades than they believed the students deserved. Most significantly, in a damning indictment on degree class standards, the poll found that 69 per cent of university academics didn’t regard the increase in the number of firsts and upper seconds as a reflection of a rise in academic standards.
The editor of the THE, Ann Mroz, concurred with this finding: ‘Our [THE] readers told us that the increase in top degree classifications awarded over the past decade is less an indication of improving standards and more of pressure for constant improvement from Whitehall that has led to distortion of the system.’
But Whitehall, unsurprisingly, doesn’t agree. David Lammy is currently Minister for Higher Education; according to him, there is no reason to buy into the idea of ‘distortions’ in standards because the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), the higher education ‘watchdog’, has to date found no evidence that university standards are being undermined. Not so however, points out the BBC. As a BBC News Online article on the story comments, earlier in the year the QAA told the BBC that ‘degree classifications were “arbitrary and unreliable”’.
At the heart of the problem, according to the THE findings, is a combination of central pressure for fast improvement and the increase in the number of university students without the resources. So effectively, coercion and inadequate provision.
Creating these problems is the government’s short-sighted bid to just ‘boost’ university graduate numbers. Not only is the university infrastructure not able to capacitate the increase without the prerequisite funding and adjustments, but the purpose of high numbers going to university has been lost sight of. Earlier in the week, Secretary of State for the Department of Universities, Innovation and Skills (DIUS), John Denham, argued that a high number of graduates is important because it is a very positive national indicator. Indeed the primary reason Labour is so keen on more university applicants is more or less because international rankings take the number of graduates in a country as a key signal of global educational competitiveness and economic development. The problem – one so rife in so much of government education strategy – is when the positive indicator becomes the aim rather than the ‘by product’. Why the number of young people going to university should be a positive sign is because it reflects educational opportunity fostered in schools, social mobility and a highly educated population. However when an increase in university graduates simply reflects a huge government push to quickly boost the number of people going into higher education, it ceases to be a valuable indicator at all.