WHO STANDS UP FOR THE ACADEMIC WHO STANDS UP TO PROTECT STANDARDS?

 A recent decision of the High Court on a matter on appeal from the Sessions Court highlights the unhappy position of the lone academic who stands up to defend academic standards in the face of faculty or departmental opposition.

The two decisions are used only for their facts. As this piece is not written as a case review, there is no intention to analyse the decisions. Neither will there be any reference made to the case name, case reference or names of the party or the university involved. (As far as can be ascertained, the High Court decision has not been reported in any of the law reports.)

The isolation and helplessness of a faculty member attempting to enforce academic standards in a university or college was one of the matters that were brought to the attention of the 2019 reform committee tasked to study the governance of higher education providers and to harmonize the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 (Act 30) with other legislation on higher education. That committee’s view was that such issues are best handled by the office of a higher education Ombudsman. One of the reform recommendations of the committee was the setting up of a Higher Education Ombudsman.

The office of an Ombudsman had it been established would have provided an alternative remedy to the travails of the academic involved in this particular case and saved her the heartache and the costs of a lawsuit. In the circumstances, as there was no Ombudsman to turn to, the academic had to end up as the plaintiff in a lawsuit.

The plaintiff in the case is a professor with more than 30 years’ experience in academia. In June 2015, the plaintiff and a colleague were appointed by their head of department to review the work of three students who were in the final year of their undergraduate programme. The students’ works had been previously graded by their supervisors. Plaintiff and her co reviewer were to assess the work of the students against the grades awarded. After a viva where they interviewed the students, they found the work of the students unsatisfactory and not deserving the marks allocated by the supervisors. Having come to this conclusion they gave the three students a further two weeks to bring their work to a satisfactory level. The plaintiff and her colleague then wrote a report of their conclusions to the Department. What transpired after this led to a serious conflict between the plaintiff and her colleagues in the department that finally led to litigation between her and a colleague.

Instead of making the corrections as advised by the plaintiff, the students lodged a complaint with the Dean of the faculty that the plaintiff had been ‘unprofessional’ during the viva. Without informing the plaintiff or her colleague, the department proceeded to set up another committee to review the marks given to the three students. 

The facts also show that the plaintiff and her colleague wrote to the HOD to find out the marks that had been awarded by the new committee to the students involved. Not receiving any response on the matter, the plaintiff and her colleague raised the matter at a regular meeting of the department. Sharp words and allegations were exchanged between the plaintiff and the department leaders. There is however nothing in the facts of the sessions court judgment that shows any attempt by anyone attending the meeting to justify the course of action taken by the second committee or the marks that were awarded at the end of the second review. The plaintiff was asked to ‘move on’, obviously indicating that she could expect no further satisfaction on the matter.

The allegations against the plaintiff are serious enough to be not accepted without further investigation by the department. Appointing a second committee to review the works of the students tantamount to at least a tacit acceptance of the students’ allegations. Why else was there a need for a second assessment? If the allegations were reasonably considered by the Dean or other authority, it would have required a response from the plaintiff and her colleague who carried out the first review. Not seeking their view is not simply an act of discourtesy to them as colleagues, but an interference with their role and rights as academics, including academic freedom.

Academic staff must have sufficient autonomy over assessment procedures that involve their scrutiny. However, placing this within the concept of academic freedom does not make it simply a privilege of the academic. The integrity of assessment goes to the heart of a university’s credentialing process. Universities have a pact with society that the output of students will match society’s expectations of a highly educated person. If assessment by a staff is challenged in the way it way it was done in this case, the integrity of the process is undermined and any credentialing by the university becomes highly flawed. When there is an alteration made to the decision of an examiner, the staff involved must have been given the opportunity to reply to the challenge before a departmental decision is taken to alter it. But there is more. To accept the allegations made by the students has two other consequences. First, it would send a message to students in the faculty, if not the whole university, that assessment of their work can be altered by lodging a complaint rather than complying with the examiner’s decision. Secondly, allegations such as those made by the students would seriously harm the reputation of the staff involved unless due process through a hearing is accorded to the academic involved.

These larger and vital issues that were at stake found no place in the judicial decisions. Rather, the judges found the plaintiff’s insistence in having the processes observed unusual. The courts failed to recognize that the plaintiff’s sense of grievance was fully justified because, by going behind her back on revising her assessment, the university had acted in a manner that destroyed the relationship of trust and confidence that is inherent in an academic’s contract with the university. The action of all those involved at the departmental level to institute a second marking was an affront to her integrity that fully justified the plaintiff’s continued insistence in having the matter reviewed. In the process the courts may also have unwittingly approbated questionable academic practices. On the question of plagiarism that was alleged in one of the students’ work, the academic who was asked to review the paper simply stated that he found the paper to be free of plagiarism and the student ‘had used a different method of writing’. This lackadaisical approach to a serious ethical issue in higher education by a group of academic staff is worrying because it points to the possibility of serious flaws in our higher education system.

As to the unprofessional conduct that was alleged, the judge in the sessions court explained that this was based on the plaintiff giving only two weeks given to the students to make the corrections. It appears that the students were preparing to return home and that there were public holidays that fell within the two weeks. If such reasons are judicially seen as sufficient to constitute academic conduct that is unprofessional, it would seem that attempts to reform higher education has to embrace a much wider audience than just academia.

The need for a higher education Ombudsman has become even more urgent.