EXAM RESULTS: Reflections on Different Worlds
Dr Robin Callender Smith
Author@ ARBITA + Honorary Professor of Media Law @ QMUL
Today A-level students in their late teens got their AI/computer-predicted and (for many) fouled-up results. When they get to University, this experience is likely to be impaired by all sorts of restrictions and limitations in a way that will be difficult fully to heal and correct justly and properly.
I empathise today with their agony despite my two-generational divide in the age spectrum and assessment process.
I am 73 years old. My final mark today came from a regularly-examined online series of four modules over 18-months for a Postgraduate Diploma International Arbitration and International Investment Treaty Arbitration at QMUL/CCLS: 65.95%....a good Merit but not a Distinction. In Postgraduate terms, only just enough to apply for a PhD place (QMUL's threshold was 65% when I actually did my PhD).
BUT....there are two massive differences now. Firstly, when my generation used their A levels to apply for university, the marking system was "on the curve". All students/schools knew that only a fraction of those taking the exams could get "A"s because the marking system was set to pyramid-grade down from top to bottom, allowing only a set maximum of passes through the grades from A down to E before a U or an F. The iniquity was that the achieved mark for an "A" one year might be a "C" for the next. It really was that mad in 1965.
Secondly, to compound the indignity and unfairness, the same system was used during my LLB and Bar Finals. In 1973, QMUL awarded only one 1st in my year and the other University of London colleges teaching law (by agreement) did the same. Very "rigorous" and favouring the only the very best....but not egalitarian or open to question or challenge. All of that has thankfully changed now.
Two generations on - with much greater marking transparency and challenge - there is a danger that this year that Universities, in their fervid hunt for undergraduates and their accompanying income to keep the institution viable - will have reversed "the curve".
That could lead to the worst possible university experience for new undergraduates: wasting a vital first year before discovering that university studies are really a step too far intellectually because they were given the false impression that they were up to it.
Woe betide an Academic Dean who bins an entire prospective Second Year at the end of next year's First Year results.
Not me, Gov. That is above my Honorary (non)-pay grade.
Author@ ARBITA + Honorary Professor of Media Law @ QMUL
4 年Tara: you were an inspiration in the LLM course that I audited before jumping in to do the LLM - and other bits - full time. I suppose my point is that my (pre-AI) generation built the unfairness in by deliberately "marking of the curve" with human rather than an algorithmic unfairness. My worry for the future is that we combine the two and double the worst of both outcomes.
Congratulations Robin for your Postgraduate Diploma International Arbitration and International Investment Treaty Arbitration !! I know what it means studying as a mature student. I unfortunately also had my part of unfairness at QMUL. It’s very tough for these young people being unfairly marked by an algorithm. They will have their first adult battle against machine unfairness.