Quotes

To give the university some credit - and they don't deserve much - the pressure is less to pass students who are borderline than to revise module requirements to ensure that they pass. For example, thenumber of assessments in modules may be seen as a barrier to pass rates and be pushed down, even where fewer assessments make it harder to actually test what has been taught.
Lecturer at a new university

We are browbeaten into passing students - you have to fully account for your decisions to fail, proving each case should not be a pass, filing reports and so on. And we're so overworked it's often easier to let them scrape through.
Lecturer at a new university in London

My experiences as an admissions tutor doing clearing were miserable. I was almost forced to accept applicants with little or no hope of making a success of the degree programme available.
Lecturer at a pre-1992 London institution

At our university, the burden of proof for student plagiarism is on the lecturer, and you have to show that at least 30 per cent of an essay is plagiarised. It is designed so that if you accuse someone of plagiarism, you spend ten times more time proving it than you would by just letting the essay go with alower mark.
Lecturer at a new university

Whistleblowers are punished, not directly but through workload, reduced research time, disciplinary action and so on.
Lecturer at a new university

I was ordered to examine students' papers in arcane subjects. I had believed that the first principle of academic practice was that the teacher or examiner ought to know more than his or her student. This is not always so.
Senior lecturer at a pre-1992 higher education institution

Last semester, I spent four hours searching for a (suspected plagiarist's) source material. It took so long because the student had bought an academic paper from a pay-to-view website. That's my time wasted and the $14.95 I had to spend in order to confirm that that student had indeed copied the essay in its entirety.
Lecturer at a new university