Here is an interesting read http://www.culturewars.com/2002/potter.html
Excellent, really excellent read, thanks for the pointer.
In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
171–180 of 248 posts
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't help feeling we would be better off if responsibility for grading was taken away from universities as it is for A levels and GCSEs. There are some problems with that but I suspect they would be outweighed by the benefits.
I've anecdotes from two university lecturers on different courses. They both want some form of external moderation. its what happens for Postgraduate degrees after all. What they report is horrifying: * Essay writing skills are lacking, "its at GCSE level" * Students contesting any form of criticism - they go via the official channels to argue why they should get a good grade. All schools are tied up in multiple trib…
> They both want some form of external moderation. its what happens for Postgraduate degrees after all.
Undergraduate university examinations in the UK already have external examiners [1]. For the national guidance, see Chapter B7 of the QAA's Quality Code [2]. This states:
> External examiners are not normally responsible for, or involved in, the assessment of individual students to the extent that they do not carry out marking of assessed work. However, to fulfil their role external examiners view student work, which ranges from reading essays or examination scripts to viewing performances (live or recorded) or artefacts. The volume of assessment generally means that an external examiner is unlikely to be able to view all the assessed work unless the cohort is small. Samples are of sufficient size to enable him/her to form a view as to whether the internal marking has properly assessed student performance against the appropriate standards.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_examiner
[2]: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/assuring-standards-and-quality/the-qual...
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
That presumes That the top 3.4% really were just the smartest - not the also the wealthiest and best connected. There is probably both some dilution of talent and also more competition from all levels of society. And as to point 1. In the UK at least there is no doubt many many more are doing a lot better at school nowadays. Schools have evened up and pupils work far harder as most jobs require qualifications.
Yes we must have social justice above all ! At the very least above average performance for all ! Are you really willing to believe that ability is randomly distributed among the population ? Because, frankly, that disagrees with a great many studies on the subject. But of course, what you can do, is lower the level of pupils until the difference between them disappears. You cannot lift everyone's level, that just do…
1. I don't mention nor advocate social justice.
2. I don't anywhere imply everyone should be average.
3. I don't say ability is random among the population but I don't actually understand what you are getting at here?
4. If we couldn't lift the ability of pupils or indeed people generally then we would still be living in caves. If we educate more people better then more people will be better educated no matter their innate starting ability.
5. Did the government make everyone smarter or lower standards you ask? I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I think that moving from 3.4% to 50% University population has possibly diluted the fraction of geniuses within academia but greatly increased the number of geniuses within academia and improved education and academia as a whole.
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've anecdotes from two university lecturers on different courses. They both want some form of external moderation. its what happens for Postgraduate degrees after all. What they report is horrifying: * Essay writing skills are lacking, "its at GCSE level" * Students contesting any form of criticism - they go via the official channels to argue why they should get a good grade. All schools are tied up in multiple trib…
>People literally copying from Wikipedia or copy and pasting from papers to make their own work. // My lad is just in UK high-school but I'm surprised at how homework is set with no provision of resources and no mention of plagiarism or need to cite sources. The kids are basically expected to find their own sources, which is ridiculous - making them trust whatever Google gives them. Once they've been inculcated into…
Funnily enough, this kinda matches how most people do their jobs now. "Just google it" is the solution to many problems in business. It's probably not the best long term strategy, but then again, neither is the stock market...
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of it is that, yes, the non-academic staff help with the mountain of non-academic work lecturers would otherwise have. I used to work in a support role at a university, and although many of the roles will inevitably be automated away, you'd be amazed at how much administration a student on a course requires (from room bookings for lectures, enrolment information, pastoral support, cleaning, cooking, supporting w…
While the things you say certainly need doing, somehow they were all done in the past with vastly smaller non-academic staff. Say 50 years ago. What's changed? Obviously IT is one thing, but this doesn't seem huge. Or maybe, it's not obvious why it need be a lot bigger than everyone having gmail. "assisting with research proposals" is certainly new. But is it big? How much falls under "pastoral support"?
> What's changed?
Student numbers. Massive, monumental growth in student numbers. And the red tape that comes with that kind of size (as ever).
Labour's push for 50% of school leavers to go to university, large swathes of new courses approved that would otherwise have been taught through vocational routes, increase in student applications vs places (in the UK you can apply [or at least could] for up to 6 places, one of the major shifts in the last few years people don't talk about is the push to use all of those slots, whereas you used to only apply to 1 or 2 - this has increased application review and support burden massively).
Also, with an insane growth in the use of Clearing/Adjustment to secure your final place, there's a lot of work put into situational modelling of expected numbers. The market has gone through a phase of only-slightly-organised chaos, and students are now calling the shots at most universities, and leaving things until the last possible moment. This has also meant unis have had to commit to staff numbers before knowing really what their cohorts will look like.
With GApps for Education, most people have Gmail - it doesn't solve anything really. Collaborative software only works if the people required have the time and technical ability (or desire) needed to collaborate. If they don't (like academics), then you get bodies to do it.
> "assisting with research proposals" is certainly new. But is it big?
Yep. University I worked at had a team in each faculty full time helping with this. The grants procedure, writing something actually comprehensible (something of a novelty with some academics, who don't appear to know what a requirement of "plain English description" is...), impact assessment and case study requirements, lining up interviews for candidates, fellows and assistants for the project team, setting up review panels etc... is a major administrative task now. Again, if there weren't support staff doing this, it'd add another bunch of hours onto each lecturer's 80 hour week.
> How much falls under "pastoral support"?
Most faculties will have several student support staff specifically to help with wellbeing during their time at uni. Having been a couple of doors down from someone who tried to commit suicide whilst in uni halls, remember rationalising away those support roles does have a human impact.
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not parent but, your statement doesn't explain why the ratio of academics to administrators should have fallen, do academics now need more administrators than they did. Are the newly employed non-academics really serving the research aims, or are they meeting the schooling requirements?
Part of it is that, yes, the non-academic staff help with the mountain of non-academic work lecturers would otherwise have. I used to work in a support role at a university, and although many of the roles will inevitably be automated away, you'd be amazed at how much administration a student on a course requires (from room bookings for lectures, enrolment information, pastoral support, cleaning, cooking, supporting w…
> the non-academic staff help with the mountain of non-academic work lecturers would otherwise have
Sometimes the academics create lots of extra work for the non-academic staff with their sub-optimal decisions.
I used to work for a university in their IT services, and as a developer I was exposed to a lot of the business rules around enrolment, course prerequisites, degree/major requirements, which we recorded and enforced through a mix of custom software and customised off-the-shelf software. Those rules were written by committees of senior academics. And, rather than keeping them nice and simple, they seemed to like to make them as complex as possible, with the result that the computer systems couldn't cope with the complexity.
The student enrolment system could handle enforcing some simpler subject prerequisites, but for more complex ones the academics concocted – like "PQR101 or BCD142 plus 12 credit points at 200 level in ABC subjects (except for ABC219 and ABC220) plus at least two of DEF211 or DEF212 or GHI292 or JKL205" – we'd just display a warning message to the student "You can only enrol in this if XYZ. Click 'OK' to confirm you meet that prerequisite", followed up by custom reports which would be run to catch students who incorrectly clicked 'OK', who would then be manually forcibly unenrolled, and contacted by phone/post/email to be told to enrol in something else instead.
Added to that, the complexity of the rules would confuse the students, and make the process of planning what to enrol in quite daunting and stressful. Sometimes students would enrol in the wrong subjects, and nobody would stop them, and only later they'd be told that some subject they just spent a semester studying didn't count towards the degree they were enrolled in.
(Hopefully, ten plus years on, they've learnt their lesson and made the rules simpler now. Or maybe not. I wouldn't know.)
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't help feeling we would be better off if responsibility for grading was taken away from universities as it is for A levels and GCSEs. There are some problems with that but I suspect they would be outweighed by the benefits.
I've anecdotes from two university lecturers on different courses. They both want some form of external moderation. its what happens for Postgraduate degrees after all. What they report is horrifying: * Essay writing skills are lacking, "its at GCSE level" * Students contesting any form of criticism - they go via the official channels to argue why they should get a good grade. All schools are tied up in multiple trib…
"Students contesting any form of criticism ... In some cases, students are SUING the university for poor grades ... Plagiarism is commonplace"
Anecdotally I heard the same stories 25 years ago when I was at university.
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#178I have lost confidence in the western university system. Too much high exorbitant fees, with no future prospects but debt, so I have taken it myself to learn online via open courses.
I presume that the "open courses" that you are consuming online are produced by the western university system?
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
>People literally copying from Wikipedia or copy and pasting from papers to make their own work. // My lad is just in UK high-school but I'm surprised at how homework is set with no provision of resources and no mention of plagiarism or need to cite sources. The kids are basically expected to find their own sources, which is ridiculous - making them trust whatever Google gives them. Once they've been inculcated into…
In FE college, we had an occasional class (as part of something else, can't remember what) that explained how to use the Internet to research properly, determine trustworthiness, and cite sources, and also how to use the library at a basic level. I'd assume that sixth-form colleges in England and their equivalent elsewhere do the same - but perhaps it's too late by then?
I can reassure you that 'research methods' courses are mandatory for all students in the vocational only FE college that I do some teaching in. Taught by LRC staff.
The plagiarism checker is active as well.
Most of the level 3 award tutors set a small assignment within the first few weeks of the course to assess writing level and catch any issues like dyslexia &c.
Re: In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the university I studied at it was well known that their policy was opening up campuses in Africa and China so to entice international students to the campus in England. This was for the sole reason of increasing cash flow and I know several of the Chinese students that I did my Masters with were paying more than ten times what I was for the same course which both myself and our lecturers were ashamed of. It may n…
This is rampant in the US as well. Many of the students cheated to get in, sometimes with the umiversity's knowledge, and weren't fluent enough in English to participate in class. There are lots of companies writing essays and otherwise facilitating the admissions cheating, and several major universities were caught a few years ago (I believe Duke was one).
I've read many anecdotal stories like this of students complaining that the quality of their education is suffering due to a large portion of the class being utterly not qualified to be there, dragging everyone else down.
I think it also has interesting potential long term implications for relative national competitiveness if you think about it regardless of whether that is a goal or not.