But King’s is not the only institution to have lowered standards in this way. Oxford and Cambridge are among the other universities moving away from exams. At the University of the West of England, students can write field-trip reports or book reviews, design a book jacket, write a pitch or record a podcast. These are no doubt fun activities. Some, perhaps, are challenging. But crucially, success does not depend on students having read extensively, thought deeply and marshalled their ideas, either under time pressure or in a longer written form.
Unsurprisingly, this is reflected in grade inflation. More than 75 per cent of all students now leave university with a first-class or 2:1 degree, with the most dramatic increase taking place between 2010 and 2020. Chinese students studying in the UK have wryly labelled Britain’s higher-education system ‘easy in, easy out’, because not only is it easier to get accepted on to courses than in the US or China, but assessments are also less stringent. In other words, easy admission is followed by low expectations and easy-to-meet academic standards.
So, the academics at King’s College are absolutely right to decry ‘dumbing down’. But the fact that they had to take their complaints to the national press raises uncomfortable questions about who runs our universities. If lecturers themselves are not setting standards, expectations and assessment methods, then who is?