2:1 – A Passport to Paradise
It has come to light that an honours degree (and who doesn’t have one nowadays?) may not really reflect what it says on the parchment. And why is that? Well, it would seem that 2:1s in particular are being doled out like consolation prizes at a kids’ talent show. Apparently it’s not about the quality of the graduates anymore; it’s about feeding multinationals with 2:1s because that’s what multinationals want.
Cardinal Newman would be apoplectic at the ease with which these once treasured academic accolades are doled out. Graduates from every third level institution in the country have (hons) after their degree – how can this be? Is it seen as an entitlement? Do academics feel under siege – do they look into their souls and admit that they are not rewarding excellence? The groves of academe are long gone; they have been replaced with the cut-throat 2:1 conveyor belt to business and industry.
Didn’t you stick out the four years and now its payback time – those stuffy old professors had better give you at least a 2:1 so that you can get a ‘great’ job as a worker bee in some giant multinational housed in a glass menagerie off the M50.
But something’s gotta give, eventually. As you sit in your cubicle answering yet another inane query, reading another pointless email or compiling figures for some jackass meeting you will envy the window cleaners dangling precariously outside your seventeenth floor office. “If it wasn’t for that 2:1,” you will say, “I wouldn’t be sitting here counting the minutes until I can run out of the building. I could be out there whistling my way through Barry Manilow’s ‘I made it through the rain.’
Then again, you might think it’s best to stay on for an extra hour or two because it will look good with the bosses. After getting a 2:1 in a liberal arts degree you have a fiercely independent nature after all and you are exercising your free will – staying late in the office is just a temporary little strategy until you get established. You convince yourself of this despite the fact that older colleagues seem unable to confidently leave the building at 5 o’clock. But that won’t happen to you. All that history and literature and philosophy has given you a hunger for intellectually stimulating employment and look at you here in your little cubicle – haven’t you landed? Aren’t you loving it more and more, as the days, weeks and months merge into one heady maelstrom of elation? Of course you are – and it’s all thanks to that 2:1.
Is it at all possible that colleges could be using a ‘special’ marking scheme for students who need the 2:1 for the multinationals?
Marking Scheme that’s sure to get you a 2:1 (60%-70%) in the Humanities
64 – there you go – a comfortable 2:1. It’s all down to the marking scheme. Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, spelling and sentence structure; that’s the kind of stuff high flyers don’t sweat. Just stand in front of the mirror and practice phrases like ‘going forward’, ‘drilling down’, ‘interfacing’, ‘bullish’ and ‘team work’ – the crud you’ll be expected to peddle for the rest of your working life – unless you cross that Rubicon of glass and join the window cleaners.
Imagine you can lose thirty marks and still get a first class honours degree! Is hitting a bare 70% demanding much from students? But maybe all this shouldn’t matter in the long run if you have benefited from a course of study and can successfully show that you have. So, for example, if you studied Greek and Roman Civilisation it would be expected that you would ‘get’ the subtle references to Medea or oblique allusions to the Allegory of the Cave. It doesn’t matter what mark you got in the exam – what does matter is that you understand and appreciate the works and acknowledge that they have improved your understanding of human nature. That should be enough for right thinking people. Isn’t it all about the ‘laarnin’?
As for the square jawed Roger Ramjets in the multinationals looking for 2:1 candidates – they epitomise the general ignorance of so-called ‘educated’ people who only serve to water down anything approaching critical thinking – being as they are, great men for the team work.
Furthermore, these multinational gurus are not as up-to-date as they should be. Don’t they know that there are thriving businesses online writing student papers for a fee – everything from first year essays to a postgraduate thesis? These assignment-writing web sites will reassure the worried ‘scholar’ that the person who writes the ‘original’ paper will be somebody who has completed a similar course in recent years to at least 2:1 standard!
The only work the ‘scholars’ have to do is answer a few questions such as the college and course they are enrolled in, the project type, word count and deadline – all of which they can find on the college web site - and the grade they would like – now that might take a bit of thought.
And shouldn’t the same Roger Ramjets be up to speed on latest developments in high tech exam cheat gadgets like for example the wireless earpieces, watches and pen scanners? Let’s take the earpiece as a fine example of nefarious ingenuity. It’s a Bluetooth device that can communicate with someone outside the exam hall at the press of a button. The button is attached to a long wire that can be run down a leg into your shoe. I wonder if these people got their design idea from Myles na gCopaleen’s Research Bureau? Remember his emergency trousers with long eel-like pockets reaching down to the ankles for storing draught stout or porter? On public transport you could hide yourself behind a newspaper and suck it through a flexible tube stuck in the pocket.
And what about the poor sods who get a Pass degree (40-50%)? They must be out there and my message to them is, “you’ll be grand.” It was quite the norm in my day. Sure weren’t we lucky to get a degree at all. Think about it, most people who are now over the age of forty-five who went to university probably fall into the poor sod category.
Personally, I think anyone born after 1980 was fed to success. Think of all the ‘brain foods’ that were not available in the sixties and seventies – cranberries, blueberries, salmon, goji berries, quinoa, chick peas. Jesus, Mary and Joseph it’s a wonder we are cognitive beings at all after MSG laden frozen burgers and instant mashed potato followed by lashings of Angel Delight all washed down with carcinogenic red lemonade. We, the generation who were denied ‘brain food’ have force fed it to our children. Sure no wonder they are all getting 2:1s.
© Copyright Berni Dwan 2014
It has come to light that an honours degree (and who doesn’t have one nowadays?) may not really reflect what it says on the parchment. And why is that? Well, it would seem that 2:1s in particular are being doled out like consolation prizes at a kids’ talent show. Apparently it’s not about the quality of the graduates anymore; it’s about feeding multinationals with 2:1s because that’s what multinationals want.
Cardinal Newman would be apoplectic at the ease with which these once treasured academic accolades are doled out. Graduates from every third level institution in the country have (hons) after their degree – how can this be? Is it seen as an entitlement? Do academics feel under siege – do they look into their souls and admit that they are not rewarding excellence? The groves of academe are long gone; they have been replaced with the cut-throat 2:1 conveyor belt to business and industry.
Didn’t you stick out the four years and now its payback time – those stuffy old professors had better give you at least a 2:1 so that you can get a ‘great’ job as a worker bee in some giant multinational housed in a glass menagerie off the M50.
But something’s gotta give, eventually. As you sit in your cubicle answering yet another inane query, reading another pointless email or compiling figures for some jackass meeting you will envy the window cleaners dangling precariously outside your seventeenth floor office. “If it wasn’t for that 2:1,” you will say, “I wouldn’t be sitting here counting the minutes until I can run out of the building. I could be out there whistling my way through Barry Manilow’s ‘I made it through the rain.’
Then again, you might think it’s best to stay on for an extra hour or two because it will look good with the bosses. After getting a 2:1 in a liberal arts degree you have a fiercely independent nature after all and you are exercising your free will – staying late in the office is just a temporary little strategy until you get established. You convince yourself of this despite the fact that older colleagues seem unable to confidently leave the building at 5 o’clock. But that won’t happen to you. All that history and literature and philosophy has given you a hunger for intellectually stimulating employment and look at you here in your little cubicle – haven’t you landed? Aren’t you loving it more and more, as the days, weeks and months merge into one heady maelstrom of elation? Of course you are – and it’s all thanks to that 2:1.
Is it at all possible that colleges could be using a ‘special’ marking scheme for students who need the 2:1 for the multinationals?
Marking Scheme that’s sure to get you a 2:1 (60%-70%) in the Humanities
64 – there you go – a comfortable 2:1. It’s all down to the marking scheme. Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, spelling and sentence structure; that’s the kind of stuff high flyers don’t sweat. Just stand in front of the mirror and practice phrases like ‘going forward’, ‘drilling down’, ‘interfacing’, ‘bullish’ and ‘team work’ – the crud you’ll be expected to peddle for the rest of your working life – unless you cross that Rubicon of glass and join the window cleaners.
Imagine you can lose thirty marks and still get a first class honours degree! Is hitting a bare 70% demanding much from students? But maybe all this shouldn’t matter in the long run if you have benefited from a course of study and can successfully show that you have. So, for example, if you studied Greek and Roman Civilisation it would be expected that you would ‘get’ the subtle references to Medea or oblique allusions to the Allegory of the Cave. It doesn’t matter what mark you got in the exam – what does matter is that you understand and appreciate the works and acknowledge that they have improved your understanding of human nature. That should be enough for right thinking people. Isn’t it all about the ‘laarnin’?
As for the square jawed Roger Ramjets in the multinationals looking for 2:1 candidates – they epitomise the general ignorance of so-called ‘educated’ people who only serve to water down anything approaching critical thinking – being as they are, great men for the team work.
Furthermore, these multinational gurus are not as up-to-date as they should be. Don’t they know that there are thriving businesses online writing student papers for a fee – everything from first year essays to a postgraduate thesis? These assignment-writing web sites will reassure the worried ‘scholar’ that the person who writes the ‘original’ paper will be somebody who has completed a similar course in recent years to at least 2:1 standard!
The only work the ‘scholars’ have to do is answer a few questions such as the college and course they are enrolled in, the project type, word count and deadline – all of which they can find on the college web site - and the grade they would like – now that might take a bit of thought.
And shouldn’t the same Roger Ramjets be up to speed on latest developments in high tech exam cheat gadgets like for example the wireless earpieces, watches and pen scanners? Let’s take the earpiece as a fine example of nefarious ingenuity. It’s a Bluetooth device that can communicate with someone outside the exam hall at the press of a button. The button is attached to a long wire that can be run down a leg into your shoe. I wonder if these people got their design idea from Myles na gCopaleen’s Research Bureau? Remember his emergency trousers with long eel-like pockets reaching down to the ankles for storing draught stout or porter? On public transport you could hide yourself behind a newspaper and suck it through a flexible tube stuck in the pocket.
And what about the poor sods who get a Pass degree (40-50%)? They must be out there and my message to them is, “you’ll be grand.” It was quite the norm in my day. Sure weren’t we lucky to get a degree at all. Think about it, most people who are now over the age of forty-five who went to university probably fall into the poor sod category.
Personally, I think anyone born after 1980 was fed to success. Think of all the ‘brain foods’ that were not available in the sixties and seventies – cranberries, blueberries, salmon, goji berries, quinoa, chick peas. Jesus, Mary and Joseph it’s a wonder we are cognitive beings at all after MSG laden frozen burgers and instant mashed potato followed by lashings of Angel Delight all washed down with carcinogenic red lemonade. We, the generation who were denied ‘brain food’ have force fed it to our children. Sure no wonder they are all getting 2:1s.
© Copyright Berni Dwan 2014
