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Row over rise in top degree results at Liverpool
The University of Liverpool was today accused of ignoring academic standards after statistics revealed an increase in the number of top degrees awarded this year during the emergency assessment system brought in because of the lecturers' pay dispute.
Some 72% of students who graduated from Liverpool this summer left with a first-class or upper second degree compared to 63% last year.
But the figures for the top degrees are understood to be much higher in certain subjects, according to a report in this morning's Times Higher Education supplement (THES).
An internal analysis of degree results by history staff, seen by the THES, revealed that 23 history students - who would not have gained the top award under the previous system of calculating their classifications - obtained firsts this year.
Firsts were awarded to 37 students, instead of the 14 who would have earned one under the previous system. The proportion receiving firsts rose from 7% in 2005 to almost 18% in 2006 - a 157% increase
It emerged that under the emergency assessment system adopted by Liverpool, students could technically achieve a first-class degree without a single first-class mark in any individual unit of their degree.
Alan Smithers, former professor of education at Liverpool, now at Buckingham University, said: "This is firm evidence of lowering the bar and reducing the value of a 'first' - which is hard on those who have done outstandingly well."
The increase in top degrees follows emergency reforms brought in last spring. These were designed to ensure that students could graduate despite the national exams and assessment boycott by the University and College Union (UCU) introduced as part of its pay dispute.
Although the industrial action was called off on June 6, the reforms were left in place. The key change was the absence of student profiling to determine degree classification in borderline cases.
Under the usual system, students whose average marks are narrowly short of a higher classification (the threshold for a first is 70%) could be graded up only if they had sufficient individual marks of a first-class standard, said the report in the THES.
But under the emergency reforms, borderline students were upgraded irrespective of their student profile. This meant that students who had an average mark of 67% would automatically receive first-class honours.
One senior member of staff at Liverpool told the THES: "It was warned at the time of the reforms that they would lead to a illegitimate increase in top degrees and would 'take an axe to the roots of what constitutes a university'. It is clear that those warnings were right."
The university, however, denied that it had let academic standards slip. Although it was unable to provide a breakdown of results by subject, the vice-chancellor, Drummond Bone, who is also president of Universities UK, told the THES: "The university has every confidence in the procedures it followed in classifying degrees following the difficult period of industrial action this summer.
"Attempts by individuals with strong views about the strike to discredit the hard work of individual students must be resisted by all who care about education. We need to move on from the bad blood."
Commenting on the Liverpool results, Sally Hunt, the joint general secretary of the UCU, said: "We said at the time that universities ran the risk of compromising their own, and Britain's, standing in the academic world with hastily cooked-up contingency plans.
"At the time we said some employers seemed more interested in hurting staff and students than ending the dispute or upholding their academic values."
Peter Williams, the chief executive of the Quality Assurance Agency, told the THES that the case "highlights the difficulties surrounding the complexities of the current degree classification system in the UK", which is being addressed by the Burgess group's proposed abolition of classifications."