Students' opinions of academics, on the other hand, remain unclear. The National Union of Students maintained its long tradition of interminable debate on the big issues of the day during its annual conference in Blackpool last week.
An emergency motion questioning the NUS leadership's unequivocal support for the lecturers' assessment boycott of students' work had been scheduled for debate. But it was shunted off the agenda following lengthy discussions on Hizb ut-Tahrir and the proposed boycott of Coca-Cola.