The Higher Education Statistics Agency recently published its annual overview of enrolments and qualifications achieved at UK universities and colleges. A breakdown of undergraduate results for 2010/11 showed that 16% of candidates now achieve first-class honours. The numbers graduating with the highest degree classification are now double what they were a decade ago. Immediate, superficial responses see yet another example of "dumbing down", but the changes are not that straightforward and these criticisms avoid tackling bigger issues about the place of higher education within British society.
The difficulties can be illustrated by two anecdotes. In the final stages of preparing for my own undergraduate exams, I came across some advice in a letter from a senior academic to a promising candidate: one had to be "glib". The purpose of the essay papers was best tackled by articulating a clear, informed, but partial take on the questions to hand, not by demonstrating the full extent of one's learning. I shared this finding with a fellow student, who with a withering look labelled me a philistine who was reducing the culminating experience of our time at the university to "passing a test".
At another elite institution 20 years ago, the departments of, let's say physics and history, had different approaches to degree classification. Physics totted up the examination scores across all papers and ranked the candidates; those in the top half achieved 2:1 degrees and above, those in the bottom half, 2:2s and below. In history the large majority of candidates achieved a 2:1 and the other classes combined made up a third of the degrees. History did not use ranking and instead relied on standard levels of achievement dividing up the cohort.
Given that this was one of the most selective universities in the country, the physics students had a right to feel aggrieved that they were being ranked against an extremely strong set of students and that the same 2:2 examination performance might have received a better result elsewhere.
With this to mind, an increase in firsts might indicate a "levelling up" of the performance of strong candidates or at least a better discrimination than having a large clump of 2:1s. Are we clear that one approach was better than another? One might argue that assessment and classification is always artificial: however, even if the educational experience is meant to be broader than the mark achieved in the formal qualification, it seems clear that candidates and potential applicants to the institution should have some awareness of the rules by which the game is going to be played.
Things are even more complicated here than with A-level examinations. Each institution that has the power to award degrees is autonomous, they guard their own standards and devise courses, styles of teaching and modes of assessment and classification as they see fit. That they continue to share the arcane system of firsts, seconds and thirds obscures this fundamental independence (only lightly moderated by the system of external examiners). Suggestions for alternatives will only confuse the matter further in the short to medium term for those looking from outside.
It is those external signals which are the subject of internal disputes between academics and managers. If most recruiters are sifting job applications by first excluding those who fail to get a 2:1, how should universities and colleges respond? With higher education now being pitched as a financial investment where the returns are seen in the higher earnings of graduates, this boundary within second-class honours becomes a key pressure point. (The proportion of firsts is less of an issue as outstanding candidates can always be distinguished in reference letters and the convoluted forms used by research councils).
If students, acutely aware of the new terrain, have made more of an effort to hit the benchmark set by employers, and academics have been able to explain how a 2:2 performance can be improved to a 2:1, then should we be surprised by the increase in candidates achieving an upper second (it has increased from 61% to 66% since 2007/08)? Or should we condemn examination boards that are now perhaps more prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to borderline candidates?
The issue is complex and newly muddied by the market reforms now taking place. It might be worth taking stock and querying the desire to be ranked, sorted and sifted in the world of limited and uneven opportunities, which is the future prospect for graduates. If we really are concerned about standards then we need a fuller analysis of the pressures around accreditation and a clearer message about what we want from tertiary education that accommodates students with a variety of motivations and ambitions. The current framing of the debate seems only concerned about helping employers reduce recruitment costs or turning all provision into training.