They're letting him do what?

Trip Start Jun 03, 2006
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Friday, July 13, 2007

The British University system is highly respected around the World, or so we're told. Now, I might sound a bit like an old fart or a conservative exclusionist when I say that I've never really agreed with the reforms of the university system in the UK and increased accessibility because it has turned academia into a business. Somewhere, thinking for thinking's sake needs to be respected and allowed to take place so that society doesn't come money obsessed or culturally bankrupt without any sense of itself, either in the past, today, or in the future.
 
It's not politically correct to say it because it might offend the sensibilities of the poor little darlings doing their first degrees, but the standards have fallen. My friends working in academia tell me the same. It's a sausage factory in British Higher Education these days: reduce the academic standards of the A-Level to let more students into university and then pump them through and take the cash. The good ones will need to spend more money to study for longer to get a meaningful qualification at Masters level.
 
It's not a pretty picture, but it's true.  Well, I'm sad to say that the system is plumbing new depths. One of my students this year was a pitiful excuse for a second year business student. He knew next to nothing and was incredibly lazy. I've seen his first year grades and there's little doubt that they were inflated to get him a pass because 4 of them were bang on the pass mark which is just not a coincidence.  Unsurprisingly he flunked his second year big time!  However, having failed half of his second year courses, he is now going into the third year of a British University course.  Why? Because it's a business.  Having provided him with a conditional offer that he could enter the third year with a second year pass, the university in question has now revised that offer to accepting him if he pays them a slightly inflated fee to attend their English Summer School.  It's pathetic. Maybe, the rich have always been thus favoured, but it seems that buying a degree is getting easier and easier.
 
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