Solent University turned inside out :: Wessex Scene Online

Solent University turned inside out

15th December 2005
Richard Pemberton

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Southampton Solent University, as reported in the last Wessex Scene, was the subject of a recent BBC South TV documentary Inside Out, broadcast on 31 October. The documentary used hidden camera footage to capture evidence of the operation of a ‘positive pass policy’ in its Film Studies Department, leaving Solent with much work to do to restore confidence in its assessment standards. The fallout from this documentary has been to demoralise many Solent students and leave them questioning the integrity of their new university.

Positive passing is a marking system whereby the mark awarded to a student’s work is inflated in order to raise it from a fail to a pass, and has long been suspected of being in operation at some UK universities and colleges.

The hidden cameras used by the BBC at Southampton Solent University showed Dr Karen Randell, in charge of Film Studies at Solent, admitting that 25% of her students should not be at university, and denigrating some of their work as "crap" and "illiterate."

Dr Randell said that she would be "challenged from the top" if she failed a student.

Jennifer Toynbee-Holmes, a senior tutor, noted that "If we didn’t care about how many students we had and how many dropped out, we would mark very differently" referring to the loss of Ł4500 of government subsidy universities suffer for each student who leaves.

Southampton Solent refused to talk to the BBC’s Inside Out team, and an inquiry from the Wessex Scene resulted in only a pre-released statement by Robyn Mills, the Solent spokesman, noting that they "have rigorous systems for setting and checking the academic standards on [their] courses."

He went on to say that Solent remain confident that the standards they set are those expected of the university sector as a whole. However the University’s press office would not answer more detailed questions on the matter, only making the assurance that a full investigation was carried out and that they believe that the problem lies not with Southampton Solent University’s standards, but those of the BBC’s Inside Out programme.

Some Solent students have been left doubting the value of their degrees and feeling unhappy with the members of staff shown in the documentary. They have criticised Solent’s management for remaining quiet on the Inside Out issue, only making a few statements and appearing to do little to publicly counteract the criticism.

One Solent student contacted by the Wessex Scene stated that Solent students have "all been told [they] aren’t allowed to talk to the press about it, even if it is for a positive article" and that staff members had advised students against writing anything about the Inside Out documentary.

However critics of the Inside Out programme have suggested that producers would have preferentially showed instances of positive passing and poor academic standards over more positive aspects. This and the way that Inside Out infiltrated the supposedly private process of Solent’s marking, were the root of much anger amongst the Solent students that the Wessex Scene interviewed.

It has been suggested that the evidence recorded by Inside Out is the end result of the government’s reforms of higher education. By aiming to get 50% of students into higher education while simultaneously cutting levels of relative funding per student (hence Top Up Fees) the government has created a commercial market for higher education in which universities operate a service in return for revenue.

This is compounded by the need of many young people to get a degree just to be able to compete in the workplace.