) che vorrei condividere perché si aggancia bene a questo passaggio che postai qui qualche tempo fa:
Basta cercare 'grade inflation' (o 'voti gonfiati' se si vuole restare in Italia) e dalla marea di risultati si percepisce come sia un fenomeno trasversale per Paesi e livelli di istruzione.. Estratti chiave dall'articolo:
At a glance, British universities are a national success story. They have increased the number of undergraduate degrees they award fivefold since 1990, while the proportion of Firsts they hand out has quadrupled – from 7 per cent in 1994 to 29 per cent in 2019. For every student who got a First in the early 1990s, nearly 20 do now. Masters’ degrees, meanwhile, are nearly ten times as common as they were. Universities have, it seems, managed to surge in both size and quality. And they have done it all while spending comparatively little on teaching, and despite a wave of sudden changes to how they operate. In no other publicly funded sector has so dramatic an expansion seemingly cost so little and achieved so much. Our universities, we are regularly assured, are “world class”. They are a prime British export; international students flock to study in the UK.
This narrative is useful. It allows government ministers to tout the UK’s influence, university management to pay themselves befittingly, and students to appear exceptional. And with each year, it is propped up by record grades. The numbers are remarkable and little understood. The proportion of students getting “good honours” – a First or 2:1 – has leapt from 47 to 79 per cent: at 13 universities, more than 90 per cent of students were given at least a 2:1 last year. And Oxbridge is leading the charge: 96 to 99 per cent of its English, history and languages students get “good honours”. [...] Never before has Britain had so many qualified graduates. And never before have their qualifications amounted to so little. Each year, far from creating graduates of an unparalleled calibre, Britain is producing waves of sub-prime students – students who are nevertheless almost all being highly rated.
[...] According to Professor Fenton of Goldsmiths, “Students come to us now with an entirely different mindset. They want to know what you want to hear in order to get a First.” Students, she says, turn up expecting to find “bite-sized chunks of knowledge that you put in certain boxes. It’s that learnt process of gaming an A* [at A-level]. That’s the complete opposite to what a university education is.” Or rather, was. “That’s what changed,” she says. “Students have been shackled in the way they learn.”[...] As schools have become ever more rigid and exam-driven, the contagion has spread. As one Russell Group professor, wary of being named, puts it: “In schools now, students are being virtually spoon-fed, and that is feeding through.”
[...] Universities are governed by a set of incentives, laid down by successive governments. What they are neither incentivised nor mandated to provide is a baseline of quality education. While a handful of universities demand quality, and some students choose to work hard, the system is not designed to ensure either. As many academics report, statistics suggest and students widely know, it is possible to sail through university with a 2:1 or First without working or learning very much at all.
This is precisely what the government implicitly encourages. It is the rational outcome of the system under which universities operate. Call it the self-perpetuating spiral of shattering standards. It starts with the academic. They are faced with an inadequate student: why do they give them a 2:1? Because they are being pressured to by university management. That pressure is typically implicit; occasionally it is explicit.
[...] Why does management impel lecturers to grade up? Because universities need good grades to rank highly in league tables. First released in 1993, league tables are now the prime driver of where students apply. There are three key league tables, including those compiled by the Times and the Guardian. They all result in similar rankings, producing an analogous handful of extremely limited and obscurely calculated data points. What is clear is that grades are critical to a university’s ranking. They affect it both directly, as one of the main measures of performance, and indirectly, through a crucial survey of final-year students. Employment prospects, another major part of the rankings, are affected by grades too. Good honours are now so common that many graduate employers will not take students without at least a 2:1. Grade inflation begets grade inflation.
[...] Universities had to give out good grades to satisfy students. That held up their ranking in league tables, which ensured new students. Those students brought with them the funding on which universities survived. Willetts lauded the competitive market he had created. But universities were not competing to provide an education. They were competing to manipulate and massage the metrics that governed their survival.
[...] In the name of social mobility, an elite university education has been sold to successive generations of students. An emaciated, grossly expanded education has been delivered. “The real tragedy,” says Derbyshire, “is we’re wasting the money, and worst of all, the time, of young people. That is unconscionable.”
, la storica università dell'elite inglese dove ha studiato Boris Johnson.. uno dei tasselli che aiutano a spiegare la megalomania del personaggio. Anche se non avete alcuna intenzione di leggerlo, un clic vi ripaga con una foto in cui campeggia un BoJo già padrone del mondo
