University Academic Cheating & Its Most Useful Module i.e. "How To Be A Good Game-Player"

The Times (2nd January 2016) and The Independent (4th January 2016) have now both had articles on University Academic Cheating. Sadly, I think these investigations with their national coverage are, at least, 4 years too late! From 2011, I had observed that the collusion between Staff and the Student's Union was bound to lead to all-out academic cheating with the realization that Student Lobbying works! I personally know a Dean of Faculty who actually advised Student Reps how to bully staff to get what they wanted and the mechanism for professionally destroying/eliminating staff who will not collude with a reduction of academic standards! This particular Dean of Faculty was absolutely gifted in this dubious area of student education.

Historically, powerful academics have always had certain favoured students who would be given broad hints about what is coming out in the exam etc. No doubt, that was and is unfair, in that, a student willing to "massage the ego" of an academic i.e. those willing to Stoop to Conquer (!), would do better than perhaps a more talented and honourable student who would not stoop to such unseemly means to get a better grade. That said, what we have now replaced that old "my supervisor is a god!" system with, is an industrial level, of what I term, "authority subversion" cheating system, that is rendering University education, at best, an expensive waste of time, and at worst, a breeding ground for young professional cheats of the future.

Students of today do not like having to submit to authority or indeed to even acknowledge the existence of any learning/knowledge hierarchy; after all, anything we do not know, we can "google". So, it reasoned that, the great leveller, Death (i.e. of Academic Standards), will abolish any difference between staff and students.

Staff-student liaison committees are set up to determine that academic challenging modules are irrelevant and must be "altered" (code for "dumbed down"). Merely to simplify the content alone is not sufficient and the students, through their all-powerful student union reps, will push for module assessment to be changed, for example, from 30% coursework 70% examined content module, to 100% coursework modules with 0% examined content. Thereafter, getting a First Class Degree is a matter of electronically "cutting and pasting" essays together, or better still, getting someone else to write those essays for a small payment (can we call it "smart" out-sourcing?).

There is another component to all this; I was personally present at staff meetings in 2011-2012 where we were instructed from the very top of the University hierarchy, to give 60% of our students Firsts and Second Uppers regardless of how the students performed. We were told that if our modules could not deliver this overall 60% result, then the module content and testing mechanism must be altered.

If highly placed (& highly-paid) University Academics cannot be trusted to protect Academic Integrity and are part of the collusion to reduce academic rigour, we cannot expect our students to have a regard for principle and high standards, as, our students will simply follow the example of those who are deemed their betters and their superiors; i.e. these past-masters of the Art of Game-Playing. Perhaps £9000/- a year is worth it, if you are being taught by successful experts how to become a really good Game-Player!