MAKING THE GRADE

It is time for Scotland's universities to look at their grades

“Grade inflation is deeply anti-meritocratic and hampers social mobility

Thirty years ago when I was at university you could tell the students who were going to get firsts. They were so clever they were almost other-worldly beings. One was in my tutorial group and was exceedingly eccentric. He was one of just three students in my year who got a first-class degree.

It’s not as if we were at the undergraduate equivalent of Dotheboys Hall. Despite being the go-to university for Oxbridge rejects, less than one third of degrees were 2:1 or above.

It is difficult to square that with the knowledge that more than 75% of students graduating this summer will have achieved a 2:1 or above. In the past two decades the number of students graduating with a first has increased five-fold, and across Britain last year over 100,000 students graduated with a degree that was once the preserve of a tiny minority.

In Scotland, the number of students graduating with firsts went up from 19% in 2012-13 to 25% in 2016-17. That’s an increase of more than 25% in four years. One in four graduates coming out of Scottish universities now have a first.

At the same time, student numbers have sky-rocketed: there are now almost twice as many students as there were in 1992. Nor are today’s students intrinsically any cleverer: in fact for the first time, the average British IQ is in decline, with a child born in 1991 scoring an average of five IQ points less than one born in 1975.

So despite the fact that higher education now encompasses students who wouldn’t traditionally have been seen as university material, and despite today’s students being no cleverer than the preceding generation, grades have risen inexorably. Something doesn’t add up.

For those of us who regularly interview young people seeking jobs, none of this will come as news. While today’s young have many admirable qualities – believe it or not, they work far harder than my generation, drink less, and take their studies more seriously – too many have degrees that do not correspond to their abilities. People with ‘a first-class mind’ used to be super-bright: sadly, many recent graduates with first-class degrees now fall well short of that description.

When so many people have blueriband degrees and faultless school exams results, it is more difficult for excellence to rise to the top. Far from spreading success, grade inflation is deeply anti-meritocratic and hampers social mobility.

None of the above is meant to denigrate young people. I have three offspring at university and all work within the system they find. The problem is with institutions which, with insufficient checks to their own selfinterest, have relentlessly inflated grades for their own benefit but ultimately to the detriment of all. Put simply, universities are being allowed to mark their own homework.

Change is often difficult. In England, moves by Michael Gove to inject more rigour into the schools exam system have been met with horror by students used to getting straight As, who found themselves struggling to complete significantly more difficult exams. Though painful, it is a start.

In Scotland, where education is devolved, the introduction of the Curriculum for Change in 2010-11 was followed by a sharp decline in standards which has not been reflected by a decline in the grades awarded for Highers and the like.

In 2015, the results for PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), the international benchmark for educational standards in 72 countries, saw Scotland register a marked downturn in reading, maths and science. In 2012 Scotland ranked top of the four nations of the UK in each category; three years later it was third, with only Wales below it.

Professor Lindsay Paterson, an education academic from the University of Edinburgh, said the Pisa results showed that Scotland’s education system is ‘failing’, adding that the 2015 results mark the lowest ebb for Scottish education in his 30-year career. ‘What else has been as much of a shock to Scottish complacency as this announcement?’ he asked.

Yet none of that has been reflected in Scottish school exam grades, which continue to rise. Last year, for the third year in succession, the number of passes at Higher level was over 150,000, or 77%, despite that period covering a dramatic downturn in relative standards, at least when judged by Pisa rankings.

The same is true of university degree results. Although the Higher Education Statistics Agency has demanded ‘strong regulatory action’ against institutions which persist with rampant grade inflation, while the HESA has also called for the creation of sector-wide standards for awarding degrees, there is little sign of any momentum to create a structure which is fit for purpose. Neither of the two independent regulatory bodies in Scotland, QAA-Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council, have teeth to sanction universities. Nor does there seem to be any wider appetite to do so.

It’s not as if it’s that difficult a task. A grade point average would be one easy way. So would marking based on proportions (ie: the first 10% get an A/first; the next 25% get a B/2nd etc). Those options are far from perfect, but they must be better than what we have now. Or maybe we could just do what HESA suggests and have an over-arching authority which awards degrees across Scotland, but which has no incentive to escalate grades. Unless this happens, Scottish degrees will eventually become devalued and the foreign students who underpin their finances will go elsewhere.

Meanwhile, poor saps like me will continue to waste time interviewing students with second-class brains and first-class degrees for jobs they are never going to get. But it’s not me who is being let down, it’s the brightest students themselves, who are being robbed of the ability to prove how brilliant they are.