Philosophy students upset at the University for failing to accurately record their exam marks and changing them nearly a half a year later.
18 philosophy students had their marks negatively changed as the result of a “clerical error” five months after receiving their marks on an assessment. The University claims this was the result of a “clerical error”.
Many students initially believed that the regrade was the result of a specific staff member who had several complaints filed against them. The University dissuaded students by saying, “The problem here didn’t involve the course convenor or any other of our academic staff. It didn’t involve re-marking the exams or anything like that. The only academic decision involved was the decision to impose the corrected marks even if lower, and that was the Senate Office’s decision.” Nevertheless, several students in discussion with The Glasgow Guardian questioned why the University decided to lower the marks after such a long time passing and why the error was not discovered sooner.
The University revealed to The Glasgow Guardian that the error occurred when transferring the results onto a spreadsheet. The error was only caught after they did a procedural data check of the grades some months later. The University noted that while 18 marks did go down more of them went up.
As for the reasoning of why they decided to nevertheless mark down the 18 after such a prolonged period, a University spokesperson responded saying, “The University of Glasgow’s Clerk of Senate was informed about the clerical error ,and as is our normal protocol in such matters, we reverted to the original and correct grade for each student.”
The email and the spokesperson also noted that students who were still unhappy with the way it was dealt with are free to file an appeal.
In response to how they are trying to prevent this mistake from happening again the University spokesperson said, “We will continue to work with the Clerk of Senate who oversees our examination processes to ensure this kind of clerical error does not happen again.” However, they did not give any specifics or planned changes to the way marks are handled.
