Degree results

How should students receive their degree results? Back in the day (I mean my day) we at Cambridge used to troop to the Senate House at the appointed hour and look at our results as they we posted up, on boards, Tripos by Tripos, in full public view. It was in some ways a brutal system. You discovered how you had done in the full glare of everyone else who was also discovering how they had done (and it was then published in the newspaper too...). But it was also supportive and collaborative. I don't remember an occasion when the student community didn't work together.. mopping up those who had done worse than expected, and those who had done better.

Now the system is that the students get their results online first, then they get put up in the Senate House... but apparently there is a petition to stop even this, that no exam results should be made public at all.

It's not hard to see where the students are coming from... but also not hard to see why the old system might be better than they imagine.

Sure, I understand why the old Senate House system was scary. But it was at least communal and it was actually supportive (and if it exposed any gender disparity then so much the better). There were loads of people there to pick you up, take you to a major drink, reassure you as only contemporaries can that a 2.2 was not the end of life (and it wasnt). Believe me I know.

Currently the system is that you receive the good or bad news on the privacy of your iphone, and the petition argues for going further -- that noone should even know what anyone else got. That would mean the mates cant even swoop round for the restorative drink, when they have seen the bad news posted up.

My point is that privacy in bad news is not always for the best. The old fashioned nineteenth century guys who invented the traditions we have, long before iphones were  invented, might not have got it so wrong. Privacy isn't always what helps most.

And, nor, while we are at it, is safety... universities are not supposed to be places (surely?) where you always feel comfortable, or safe, or unthreatened. They are supposed to be places where you feel there is someone to discuss, to debate and support when you do feel that.

Oh dear. I feel a bigger blog coming along.