Oxford grad suing the university because he got a 2:1

[spanglechick]

My friend got into Oxford from a state school about 12 years ago to do either chemistry or maths (I can't remember), I know there were less than 20 students on his course.

He came out with a third. He went from the best of the best to mediocre at best, Oxford definitely let him down.

At school kids like that are big fish in a small pond, the golden hope of the school, given every support and encouragement imaginable. And then you arrive at your college to be just another minnow, with no extensive support mechanism.

 

[pengaleng]

what a dickhead.

 

[not a trot]

Bingo - our entire YEAR got ungraded technical drawing at O level - I'd been provisionally awarded a job at the Admiralty as a draughtsman - getting ungraded put a halt to my promising career in designing warships - and this was, like, 40 years ago - I dread to think how much money I've had stolen from me due to incompetent teachers (nothing, of course, to do with the fact that I was a right royal lazy little shit who did minimal, if any, revising)

I remember my probation officer asking how many A levels I would be sitting.
10 I replied
You're joking she said
Well you fucking started it

 

[Winot]

At school kids like that are big fish in a small pond, the golden hope of the school, given every support and encouragement imaginable. And then you arrive at your college to be just another minnow, with no extensive support mechanism.

This was certainly true 25 years ago. Quite a few kids who have learnt to equate academic success with self-worth find it quite a strain on their mental health when they realise they are no longer top dog. Think there might be more support etc. in place now.

And IIRC there is research to show that Oxford doesn't add much value - takes in kids who are bright academically and spits out the same. Again, not sure if that applies today. Certainly when I was there (25 years ago; chemistry from a state school; first generation university) the standard of education was pretty varied depending on the tutor. And at the more strategic level it was rubbish - they hadn't at that point thought to align what you were being taught in lectures with what you were being taught in tutorials for example.

Anyway, that's a bit of a derail. This guy's clearly an entitled dick and is going to lose.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

I went to Oxford.

Couldn't get parked so pushed on to Banbury.

Was mediocre.

 

[pengaleng]

score out of 10?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

a generous 4.

 

[not-bono-ever]

They should cancel his degree and refund his fees. that'll learn him

 

[tim]

Pretty much my thoughts, too!

The worry is that he might win, because, according to that article, the University has accepted that they failed to provide him with the quality of teaching he should have received.

I really hope not!

I can't feel as passionately about it as you do. He strikes me as a chancer. However, if the University have conceded that his tuition was inadequate, why shouldn't they be made to compensate him? Higher Education is a business and if a business sells a substandard product then consumers expect compensation.

 

[DotCommunist]

interesting what flypanam was saying about the whole concept of education-as-commodity. I suppose it has always been there in some form or other but this really is taking the piss, you don't buy a degree you buy access to it (or, realistically, take on shit tons of debt). Recall a poetry tutor telling me how when he was a young man you didn't have required lecture attendance percentages, few big essays. It was a case of you are here now get on with it or don't, at least after the first years term hand holding and aclimatising. But increasingly the 'student experience' and all that seems like a socialisation process for the children of the middle classes. Education as product rather than as learning. Eh maybe it was always so, but srs. If this bloke wins I could potentially sue my old lot for being a drunk who dropped out in yr two (with good grades I might add. Even drunk me is capable of a decent turn of phrase. No application to the art you see, always lets me down. Stamina on lack).

 

[heinous seamus]

According to a report in the Sunday Times, Siddiqui suffers from insomnia and depression which his barrister, Roger Mallalieu, puts down to his unexpected failure to gain a first.

Mallalieu told the high court that his client’s lesser grade “denied him the chance of becoming a high-flying commercial barrister”.

 

[Wilf]

DJWrongspeed Well, from his point of view he is a consumer of education, he paid for it so he clearly thinks he deserved a first.

This is the way education is going, every university piles money into surveys to find out what the student wants and then at the expense of those that work there, provide it in the hope that student satisfaction will help them to attract more students.

This is only going to get worse when the Office for Students comes into being as funding will be tied to student satisfaction.

In some ways this is a clash of two different cultures in higher education. On one side there's this grasping cunt, trying to tap into the ethos you describe. Education as product, the market, student satisfaction - something that ignores the fact that students don't just receive a product, they are the product. But if the reporting of this is correct, Oxford also displayed the other older, elitist university culture, that elevates research over teaching, thinks teaching will look after itself etc. The reports I read said something like 5 of the staff who might have taught him had chosen to take sabbaticals then and he ended up with the stressed bloke who didn't deliver.

Have to be careful here: I'm not claiming he'd have got a first otherwise (and more to the point I don't give a flying fuck whether he got a first). I'm also not saying university managers should also be able to 'deploy' staff, which increasingly is exactly what they do. Just that there was this older tweedy caste of gentleman scholars whose status as semi-independent professionals never saw meeting the needs of students as a priority. In some ways, it's the about the failure to develop any kind of solidarity within HE amongst different groups of workers and between staff and students. The absence of that opened the door to all the quasi consumerist shite you describe.

 

[Guineveretoo]

I can't feel as passionately about it as you do. He strikes me as a chancer. However, if the University have conceded that his tuition was inadequate, why shouldn't they be made to compensate him? Higher Education is a business and if a business sells a substandard product then consumers expect compensation.

I am not sure why you read "passion" in my response. Although I guess you read it in the post to which I was replying

I agree that the University should be held to account if it is not providing an adequate education, but I don't think that the way to do that is to wait 16 years and then sue. In fact, I don't think that suing is the answer anyway. i don't like the way that we are moving towards being litigious at the drop of a hat.

This guy should have complained at the time, and sought to have his degree marked again, or to have a retake, or something.

I don't like this mentality that seeks to get money out of people who are providing a service, even one which, as you say, is now seen as a business rather than a public service.

 

[mauvais]

At school kids like that are big fish in a small pond, the golden hope of the school, given every support and encouragement imaginable. And then you arrive at your college to be just another minnow, with no extensive support mechanism.

Or the other version of this, that they don't have to try very hard to succeed when the pool is small and the bar is low, and so get complacent, which only reveals itself to be a problem when faced with more competition and a greater challenge.

 

[flypanam]

In some ways this is a clash of two different cultures in higher education. On one side there's this grasping cunt, trying to tap into the ethos you describe. Education as product, the market, student satisfaction - something that ignores the fact that students don't just receive a product, they are the product. But if the reporting of this is correct, Oxford also displayed the other older, elitist university culture, that elevates research over teaching, thinks teaching will look after itself etc. The reports I read said something like 5 of the staff who might have taught him had chosen to take sabbaticals then and he ended up with the stressed bloke who didn't deliver.

Have to be careful here: I'm not claiming he'd have got a first otherwise (and more to the point I don't give a flying fuck whether he got a first). I'm also not saying university managers should also be able to 'deploy' staff, which increasingly is exactly what they do. Just that there was this older tweedy caste of gentleman scholars whose status as semi-independent professionals never saw meeting the needs of students as a priority. In some ways, it's the about the failure to develop any kind of solidarity within HE amongst different groups of workers and between staff and students. The absence of that opened the door to all the quasi consumerist shite you describe.

You're correct. Teaching is a side issue for Universities these days, as more money can be made as a result of research. I dimly remember some education think tank saying that Oxbridge should amalgamate their research to tackle Harvard and Sanford's dominance in the field. A couple of years ago all anyone would talk about was the importance of the REF (Research Excellence Framework) and it's implication for funding. All the stuff you've written there is the logical outcome of the capitalist University, good review of two books critical of the education system here by Stefan Collini LRB · Stefan Collini · Sold Out: The Costs of University Privatisation

 

[tim]

This guy should have complained at the time, and sought to have his degree marked again, or to have a retake, or something.

I don't like this mentality that seeks to get money out of people who are providing a service, even one which, as you say, is now seen as a business rather than a public service.

The time lapse is absurd, but he's not trying to get money out of people providing a service. He's suing a wealthy, elitist institution that has conceded failiure. Whatever the values of those teaching in them, and however much we might wish things were different, modern educational istitutions are highly competitive and commercial.

I also wonder if those who run the University of Oxford have ever deigned to consider that they provide a public service.

 

[Santino]

I also wonder if those who run the University of Oxford have ever deigned to consider that they provide a public service.

I expect that some of them have, and some of them haven't. Depending on your understanding of who 'runs' the University.

 

[Pickman's model]

In some ways this is a clash of two different cultures in higher education. On one side there's this grasping cunt, trying to tap into the ethos you describe. Education as product, the market, student satisfaction - something that ignores the fact that students don't just receive a product, they are the product. But if the reporting of this is correct, Oxford also displayed the other older, elitist university culture, that elevates research over teaching, thinks teaching will look after itself etc. The reports I read said something like 5 of the staff who might have taught him had chosen to take sabbaticals then and he ended up with the stressed bloke who didn't deliver.

Have to be careful here: I'm not claiming he'd have got a first otherwise (and more to the point I don't give a flying fuck whether he got a first). I'm also not saying university managers should also be able to 'deploy' staff, which increasingly is exactly what they do. Just that there was this older tweedy caste of gentleman scholars whose status as semi-independent professionals never saw meeting the needs of students as a priority. In some ways, it's the about the failure to develop any kind of solidarity within HE amongst different groups of workers and between staff and students. The absence of that opened the door to all the quasi consumerist shite you describe.

Oxford is a research university. academics have to conduct research as well as teach. and tbh undergraduates are often loss leaders, postgraduates are more often where the money is. plus academics have to publish. the tensions make it more likely something will not receive the attention it should. but even if 4/7 or 5/7 of the usual teaching staff were absent I would bet anything yer man still got more personal attention from the remaining academics than someone at ucl, at Bristol, or at the university of Central Lancashire does under normal circumstances

 

[Pickman's model]

Oh and if yer man felt aggrieved at the time he should have launched an academic appeal at the time perhaps with the assistance of the Oxford university students union (not to be confused with the Oxford union).

 

[Manter]

There is some really interesting stuff about the commodification of education, and I do think universities do have to be held to account if someone is racking up huge debt and the university frankly cba with them (as was the case with me, at Leeds)
But this isn't the way to do it. And he's 38 so he was the same year as me- tuition was £1k, not the current ludicrous amounts, so this whole £1million thing is particularly laughable. This all has airs of him thinking life was going to be easy, and is thrashing around for someone to blame for his own inadequacy.

 

[kabbes]

he's 38 so he was the same year as me- tuition was £1k

Or he was my sister's year and tuition was free, even.

 

[Pickman's model]

When you do a degree you (or the state in former times) pay for the opportunity to get a good degree. but you're not paying for a first, only the opportunity to get one,and this relies on your putting the effort in. null points for this chancer.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

When you do a degree you (or the state in former times) pay for the opportunity to get a good degree. but you're not paying for a first, only the opportunity to get one,and this relies on your putting the effort in. null points for this chancer.

All sounds very biased against people who are lazy or not very bright.

 

[Pickman's model]

All sounds very biased against people who are lazy or not very bright.

Yeh. so it does.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Having a first from brasenose vs a 2:1 will have probably have made no negligible difference to any of his career options. he seems to have got an MBA from the LBS somewhere down the line, so his shitty second from Ox doesn't seem to have reigned him in that much. He sound like a chancer compo twat. I hope his current role is secure, as this will hardly endear him to any prospective employer in the future.

Reign - What a monarch does.
Rein - A piece of equipment used to control a horse, used colloquially to describe the fettering of someone's behaviour.

 

[Sasaferrato]

While I think of it someone I knew who got a third in chemistry has gone on to have a very successful career in i.t.

There is a lady who got a 2:2 in Agricultural Engineering, who went to a career on television, and a reputation as an arithmetical genius.

 

[marty21]

I got a 2:2 in 1988, I am not yet a high flying lawyer -

*phones lawyer*

 

[Pickman's model]

There is a lady who got a 2:2 in Agricultural Engineering, who went to a career on television, and a reputation as an arithmetical genius.

if you're thinking of vorderman i was under the impression she got a third

 

[Pickman's model]

I got a 2:2 in 1988, I am not yet a high flying lawyer -

*phones lawyer*

get diamond on the case

 

[marty21]

I know people who got a 1st and they aren't high flying lawyers

what is that about