'When ideas fail, words come in very handy'

So wrote Goethe, in Faust.

I mention it only because the VIPs in suits waffled that they'd 'accepted responsibility'. They might suspend performance related pay this year (performance of hundreds of job cuts, misleading the government, withdrawing from league tables, imposing a vacuous new curriculum and reducing staff morale to zero) but then again they might not. They set the agenda, they talked a lot. The nature of the new curriculum wasn't even reached. I did ask the aforesaid VIPs to resign - declined! Clearly 'responsibility' means something else on their pay grade.

The most interesting bit was when it was claimed that all universities have been caught out by an 'arcane' rule change about what a completing student means (e.g. the university gets paid when a student completes (hands in the final piece of work, not necessarily passes) the year's modules.

?

This has been public knowledge for a very long time. Peter Knight wrote about it, with examples, in the Guardian Education section in 2006! He was V-C at UCE, so if he knew about it, why didn't our lot?

Let's see what Professor Knight said, three and a half years ago:

The committee has ruled that the university is funded for a student if, and only if, the student completes every aspect of the year's work in that academic year. Any postponement of a final assessment, any resit, will almost certainly result in the student being regarded as a "non-completer" and not fundable, even if the academic decision is that the student can proceed to the next year of study.