Friday 24th June, 2016 - Exam Boards past and present

I've just attended what will probably be my last 'final exam board' for the award of degrees.  I cast my mind back to the first I attended as a new lecturer.


Everything then was done by reading out the names of each student in turn.  We weren't far in when a senior colleague responded to one name by calling out "fishwife".  Whilst I was surprised, others were used to this: it apparently indicated that the senior colleague felt her standard of written English was somewhat below par.  I'm not sure why fishwives were presumed to be particularly illiterate.


At that time a great deal of extraneous information was brought into discussion about candidates - not all of it relating to the marked assessments.  Contributions to field classes (and not just academic contributions but also social) were mentioned, along with performances in the cabaret at the annual GeogSoc Ball.


I for one was very happy when, a few years ago, we moved to anonymising each candidate on the mark sheet for decisions.  We had already, under successive chairs of boards, moved to tighten up the conduct of board discussions to concentrate on academic performance.


Another thing that happened in my early days was the selection of a small number of candidates for viva voce examinations.  Some were chosen because they were on borderlines and we wanted the external examiners to give an assessment of them overall.  Others were chosen because they were somewhere in the middle of a class and the belief was that seeing these individuals would give the externals an idea of 'level' from which to base their assessments of the borderlines.  Vivas were a nightmare for the poor students (and I later discovered that they were an equal nightmare for the externals).  But they could also be manifestly unfair: I remember when I was an exams officer objecting to the suggestion that a particular student who was well below any borderline should be given a viva - the staff member putting the individual forward for this role knew that she was so articulate in oral discussion that she would wow the external into recommending a class of degree that would mean she leapfrogged several others with much better marks. 


When I became an external examiner I had to conduct vivas at two institutions.  At one I was put in a small room with students for whom I had not been given any of their exam papers, and asked to chat to the individuals for 30 minutes and come up with a view.  The other place where I had to conduct vivas was rather different - there were accusations of serious misconduct and the viva was effectively a court of law where two accused individuals, gowned up, had to appear in front of  a set of 6 examiners with the two externals present asking the questions.  Perhaps fortunately for all concerned, the students pleaded guilty to their misdemeanors on arrival (having earlier denied them) and we were all spared the task of cross-examination.


Vivas had no quality control mechanism built into them and great  weight was put on the opinion of the external examiner from a brief conversation.  I was pleased when we (and almost all other) universities got rid of them - although I can see their value in certain subjects such as Architecture where an examiner can converse with, and challenge, a student about their creative work.


Many of these old practices survived because we were operating solely with 'gut instincts'. What changed the nature of exam board decisions - and of the whole context of examining from both student and staff perspectives - was the creation of criteria to identify different levels of performance.  I think this is the biggest single factor explaining the rise in the proportion of good class degrees in UK universities.


When I did my finals - a long time ago - I had no idea about what it was the examiners were looking for.  All I had was the marks on weekly essays as a guide.  I was awarded a First Class degree without fully comprehending what that meant I had done (other than get good marks).  That year there were 4 Firsts awarded in my degree school: when I acted as external examiner in the same department many years later we were awarding perhaps 15  to a cohort of about the same size.  David Willetts challenged me in a public forum a couple of years ago to admit that standards had slipped.  My argument was that that had not happened - but that we had now made clear to students what it is that constitutes a First class, an Upper Second and so on.  And students have responded to that by sharpening up their acts in an attempt to fulfill those criteria.


Finally we have also, as universities, tightened up our regulations on the award of degree classifications.  We now have rules about what average marks or what distributions of performance lead to a particular degree class.  The whole system is much more transparent.


So today I have sat through an exam board that lasted an hour, with no special pleading for individual students (whose names were not known). (I should add that medical cases and special circumstances had already been considered by a small group.)  We did not have long discussions about conversations in vivas, or about the dress sense, dancing ability or general sportsmanship of individual students.  We had clear recommendations from the application of a detailed set of rules (which I had helped to write when I was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor).  There were more Firsts awarded than when I first arrived in the Department.  But we had no calls of "fishwife". 


There has been progress.


(It might have been expected that I would blog today about the Brexit vote.  But I haven't yet gathered my thoughts fully about what that might mean.  For an earlier view readers might like to consider my blog of 13 June.)

Monday 20th June, 2016 - What has the EU done for me?

The 3^rd June Times Literary Supplement had an interesting item in which about 30 people from the world of the arts were asked what difference the UK’s membership of the European Union had personally meant to them. It set me thinking about what my answer would be.

It is possible that, if the vote on 23 June is for the UK to leave the EU, my career as a university lecturer will largely match the period of British membership.  We joined in 1973, and I started lecturing the following year.  And 2016 could see both a vote to leave and my retirement.

When I started my career almost everyone I worked with was British.  All my colleagues were, and while there were a few research students from overseas the majority were from the UK.  That has hugely changed – in part through globalisation, but also through the free movement of labour and people within the EU.  When I stepped down after three years as head of the Department of Economics we had appointed to the staff a Finn, a Romanian, and a Spaniard, all without any red tape.  (In contrast the Human Resources Department had had to go through various hoops for us to appoint two Indians and a Turk).  Had we not been able to appoint these ‘immigrants’ we would have had to go for less well-qualified UK applicants, and the standard of education and research we could offer would almost certainly have suffered.  But these colleagues also bring diversity, different viewpoints and experiences, and provide insights that are immensely fruitful in teaching students about the complexity of the contemporary world.

In my own department, Geography, one of my close colleagues is Greek and I have employed a Dutchman to help with my teaching while I was on the University’s Executive Board.  I did a conference presentation recently with a colleague from an administrative department – she is Romanian.  In other parts of the University I have worked closely with several French, Germans, Italians, a Portuguese and so on.  In my view it has been the opening up of the European Union that has created the mentalities for such mobility.

And I have seen that amongst my ex-students.  Back in the 1970s my graduates all sought jobs exclusively in the UK.  Today they know that the whole of the European Union’s labour market is open to them.  I have seen graduates go off to employment in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany and to international companies that want the flexibility to send their trainees anywhere easily.  Membership of the European Union has certainly opened up the employment possibilities for young graduates.  It annoys me that the debate on EU membership concentrates so easily on immigration, when the possibility of emigration is one of the great benefits of membership for many people.

I was responsible for setting up my department’s first ERASMUS programme, creating student exchanges around Europe.  Our first partners were in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland (not an EU state but one that paid to be part of the exchange scheme).  Over the years dozens of students have flowed in both directions, with the benefits being met by ALL students whose seminar groups have been influenced by the experiences of those from other origins.  And I like to think we have created some ‘soft power’ through these exchanges as well.  I was interested a few years ago to attend a conference in one of our partner countries where I found that a significant proportion of the younger academics there had been on exchange to Sheffield and had been more successful in their careers as a result – and felt very warmly towards both Sheffield and the UK as a result.

But it’s not only a question of undergraduate exchange students.  I have also supervised PhD students from the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy, as well as advising doctoral or postdoctoral visitors from France and Spain.

In recent years I have been on work commitments to a number of countries which, in the 1970s, would have been unimaginable destinations – Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania – as well as working with colleagues from the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland.  Many commentators see the existence of the European Union as driving aspirations within parts of the former Soviet Union and its satellites, leading ultimately to the events of 1989-1991 and the revolutions overturning Communism, as well as the independence of the Baltic States.  My experiences, and through me those of my students, have been enhanced by the visits and contacts I have made.

In total it is my view that the University has been immeasurably improved by the mobility of staff and students – and by the mentalities encouraged by such mobility – resulting from the UK’s membership of the European Union.  We are a far less parochial institution than we were in the 1970s.  And I’ve only dealt with the teaching aspects of my career here – not the research topics, connections or partnerships that have been fostered through membership.

And there is one more thing that has changed.  Writing this in mid June, I know that a number of my colleagues are packing for their summer visits to their second homes in France, Spain and Portugal, and in some cases they are on track towards retiring there.  And I know that they bought these properties with international mortgages that did not exist before the European Union came into existence.

Monday 13th June 2016 - Looking back from 2026

I have just finished my final undergraduate marking task.  And having done that, I had a dream.

...

It was 2026, and I had just come across the ring-binder with all the papers from my delivery of my final year course ten years earlier, in 2016.  I turned the files over and came across all the topics we had studied then (the course was called 'The Social Geography of Europe').  We had dealt with welfare regimes, citizenship structures and ideologies of national identity, separatist movements, minority language communities, Islamophobia as well as the fortunes of communities such as the Roma and Jews across Europe.  We had looked at problems of social inclusion in  cities as well as the changes being brought by new wealthy elite groups.  We had looked at continuing issues in the break up of Yugoslavia, and we had looked at changes in Central and Eastern European cities since the end of Communism.  Looking through the files and papers I got to musing about what would be different now if I were to give the course again - ten years later.  

That summer of 2016 had seemed important, even at the time.  The UK referendum on whether or not to leave the EU had gone the way many expected - or feared: a clear majority for exit.  In my course I had not dealt with the EU and its politics directly - perhaps I should have done.  Although I knew that almost every student of the 69 on the course then had intended to vote to stay in.  

I had predicted that Scotland would go for independence within a couple of years - and I had been right.  With the Scots having voted 'in', they felt they were being ignored yet again by England and a second independence referendum was called in the summer of 2018.  What surprised me at the time, and still surprises me, is what happened in Ireland.  I suppose I should have expected the Northern Ireland electorate to vote to stay in the EU, but the way in which the financial turbulence in what was still then the UK played out during 2016-18 was very interesting in the one part of the kingdom that used both the Euro and the pound.  The Irish government played its cards very well, but they were helped by the assertive UKIP / Conservative coalition in the UK who proposed sealing the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, just as they were doing between Scotland and England.  In effect now, in 2026, Northern Ireland is in a limbo position - effectively reunited with Ireland with the apparent agreement of the Protestant community who see themselves as better off than they would be allied to England and Wales where economic growth over the last few years has been poor.  Yet that de facto  position has not yet been fully ratified internationally.

But I remember in that summer of 2016 thinking that the biggest changes in Europe might not actually be set off by the UK referendum but in France.  What happened over the last few years has been distressing in the extreme - to see a major country brought to its knees by what has been in effect ideological obduracy in a number of forms.  Back in 2015 the French refusal to yield on their assimilationist views about what everyone else saw as legitimate minority communities was a partial backdrop to the atrocities of that year.  The headscarf legislation was just one sign of a French mentality that continued to insist that there was only one way to be French, and that involved adopting secular values and dropping all cultural difference.  I know that other countries were ideologically moving in something of the same direction at the time, but France was taking this to extremes.  With one of the biggest Islamic populations in Europe, but a refusal to even accept the idea of ethnic difference, something had to give - and it was the patience of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who saw themselves as having a hyphenated French identity but remaining outlawed in French thinking.  Their uprising in a series of popular protests that reminded me of East Germany in the autumn of 1989 was also triggered by the economic crisis created by the impossibility of  French governments, of different complexions, being able to pass legislation to de-regulate the labour market and thus kick start economic growth.  The obduracy of the unions, particularly the CGT, coupled with the ineffectualness of governments, contributed to France failing to share in even the modest economic growth occurring elsewhere in the late 2010s.  The French welfare model effectively collapsed in 2021, after five years of on-off strikes had crippled the national exchequer.  It was painful to watch Christine Lagarde, still head of the IMF, pulling the plug on French finances.  Belgium, of course, went the same way a year or two earlier - never having really got its act together after the atrocities of late 2015.

Islamophobia, already on the rise for over 15 years by 2016, just got worse over the last ten years.  In England and Wales it was fuelled by the triumphalism of the populist Brexit movement that had made a great deal of immigration issues during the final days of the referendum campaign, and which certainly led to the bigger majority for 'out' than had been expected.  The way the English Defence League jumped on the bandwagon after the referendum result and starting calling for Islamic 'migrants' (most of whom were UK-born anyway) to be 'sent home' was most unfortunate: and the rump government at the time was too concerned with trying to govern at all to do anything to contradict their rhetoric.  

Germany handled the Islamic question surprisingly well, given the huge numbers of Islamic refugees the country accepted.  Merkel hanging on to power in the 2017 elections proved a blessing since she used her mandate to introduce some of the most far-reaching integration policies in Europe - convincing the German population that immigration, and Islamic immigration at that, was the best solution to their demographic problems, and introducing labour market policies that got migrants and minorities into work and also provided cultural training for them - AND for German natives to understand the new communities (and some long-standing ones) around them.

I remembered that in 2016 my students had expressed the view that European welfare models could survive another ten years.  They were right for some countries but not others (particularly France).  Spain also suffered badly from the independence in 2020 of Catalunya (as we must now spell it) which followed from the Scottish independence referendum two years earlier.  

Turning to Eastern Europe, I recalled the fact that my students back in 2016 had known very little about the whole region when they started the course, and said that they felt they had learned a lot in just four months by the end of it.  The most distressing development, which some of my students had predicted in 2016 in essays they wrote for me then, was the reoccupation of the Baltic States by Russia on the pretext of protecting the interest of the sizeable Russian minorities there - particularly in Estonia and Lithuania.  NATO had been powerless to intervene when US President Trump, elected to a second term in 2020, had adopted an isolationist stance.  Economic growth in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe had been bolstered by overspill from the German economy to some extent.

In the last ten years the EU has lost England and Wales, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as members - and Greece still teeters on the brink.  But it has new members in Catalunya and Scotland - the latter admitted remarkably quickly in part to spite the out-voters of England and Wales (in reality England).  And following the 2016 referendum in the UK the Commission actually got its act together and introduced some fiscal policies to support the Euro in a way that did not seem likely ten years ago.  T

However, the element that I suppose none of us foresaw in 2016 was the way that Chinese interests would come to dominate throughout Europe.  I do remember going to a postgraduate conference in the summer of 2016 where a paper was given on the rapid growth of elite Chinese migrants bringing investment and entrepreneurial skills to new markets, but I never envisaged the speed with which this would happen.

I had been in Hong Kong in October 2014 when the Chinese announced the ending of the one-child policy, but by 2018 it was clear that this was having no effect on the Chinese birth rate - and the moves made then by the Chinese government with the IMF to create a sort of new Marshall Plan for Europe were astounding.  They saw Chinese economic growth as now being in part fuelled by profits from off-shoring various activities.  Trump's isolationist policies in the US, and some stereotypically racist comments he had made about Chinese physiognomies, meant that the Chinese did not look to the States for opportunities.  Instead they are creating rapid investment streams in a number of European countries - Portugal, Italy, Ireland (north and south), the Netherlands, Scotland (access to the whisky market helps) and several countries in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.  Finland and Sweden have also done well through Chinese interests.  And with Chinese investment has come new Chinese migration: the new elite migrant communities today in Berlin, Frankfurt, Milan, Bucharest and elsewhere are Mandarin-speaking and several thousands strong (and growing rapidly).  

England and Wales have not shared in this growth of Chinese investment and communities because of the anti-immigrant policies of the government there - and indeed many of the EU residents in the UK in 2016 went 'home' soon after the referendum, driven to do so by the unremitting rhetoric against EU migrants which failed to differentiate between doctors and fruit pickers, restaurateurs and care workers.  In fact such numbers went home during the first five years after the referendum that labour shortages hamstrung a number of employment sectors in England and Wales - the hotel and catering trade in London almost collapsed, as did parts of the farming industry; and elder care became unaffordable for thousands without Eastern European care workers.

Some things haven't changed much since my students discussed them in 2016.  There are still tensions in various parts of former Yugoslavia - Slovenia's mediation efforts came to nothing, and Greece still refuses any settlement of the Macedonian question.  Although it looks as if within a year or two both Kosovo and the western part of Macedonia will be absorbed into a much-enlarged Albania.  Boundary redrawing, once anathema in Europe, has become commonplace with the creation of independent Scotland and Catalunya.  Greece is still bankrupt, and is preoccupied with the  rapid growth of Turkey which looks set to exceed Greek GDP per capita within a year or two.  But Greece shares some of the problems of France - a refusal to deregulate markets, and an ideology that does not recognise 'other' ways of being Greek.  Cities in the former Communist bloc continue to develop under capitalism, except it is often now Chinese-run capitalism.  The Roma continue to be discriminated against almost everywhere.  (However the problems and tensions in France have resulted in the big Jewish community there migrating almost in its entirety to Israel - following the invitation in 2015 of the then Prime Minister Netanyahu who said French Jews should return 'home'.  Interestingly, this French Jewish population has added to liberal ideals in Israel and Natanyahu's government was voted out and replaced in 2022 by one that is more sympathetic to a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue.)

But then .... I woke up.  It was all a dream.  But it set me thinking about whether the students on my course this year (and I am talking 2016 now here) have got the background knowledge and the skills to interpret changes of this nature over the next ten years as a result of taking the module.  Only time will tell - but as I write this there is still ten days to prevent one of the key elements in this dream from happening.  The UK could still vote  against Brexit.