Academics feel too much pressure to loosen their grade boundaries

Some academics have voiced that they are feeling the pressure to loosen the marking boundaries for students as a means to continue attraction to their university; better results equals more student applications. Figures reveal the number of students graduating with a first or an upper-second class degree is significantly high with comparison to 40 or so years ago. These reports come from the preliminary results from the 2015 Times Higher Education Best University Workplace Survey that surveyed more than 2,700 university staff from across the UK, with approximately 1,100 classifying themselves as academics. 32% of scholars believed that universities are willing to compromise on the quality of work produced in order to uphold student numbers. One scholar at a university in the South stated that the vice-chancellor was "money obsessed" and was implementing a "culture of rack 'em, pack 'em and stack 'em" towards students, and added that the "senior management team encourages unethical and immoral recruitment."

This is the second year that Times Higher Education has rolled out this particular survey, which provides the prospective from within the institution itself. John Gill, THE editor, states the importance of participation in this survey in order for improvements and changes to be implemented. He notes: "We hope to build on last year's excellent response, which allowed us to produce one of the most in-depth independent analyses of university life ever published - but we can't do that without your help."

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