Student Protest’s 100-word feedback for 8,000 Word Thesis Calls it a Joke

Cursory: Rebecca May, a final year student at Strathclyde University, was dissatisfied with the insufficient feedback she received for her dissertation. Due to a supervisor boycott, her work was assessed by someone unfamiliar with it in a short time. The feedback contradicted her supervisor’s instructions and led to a disappointing grade. May protested at her graduation ceremony, criticizing the distribution of provisional awards and its impact on students’ future prospects.

Due to her supervisor taking part in the marking and assessment boycott, a student from Strathclyde University in Glasgow has had to express her strong dissatisfaction with the feedback she received for her 8,000-word dissertation, after her work was assessed by someone who had not been involved in the dissertation process.

Rebecca May, a final year student studying English and French, criticized the 111-word feedback she received, considering it an insult to both herself and her supervisor. In an interview with The Glasgow Tab, she referred to the feedback as a joke.

May explained that the feedback she received contradicted the instructions given to her by her supervisor. Specifically, her supervisor had advised her not to change the title of her English dissertation, which was focused on analyzing the problematic behaviors of men in 19th-century literature and their redemption arcs within reconciled relationships.

However, the feedback she received from a single marker, without double-checking, criticized her title as “unwieldy.” May had dedicated countless hours to her dissertation since May 2022, with a couple of weeks spent solely on its completion. She speculated that the marker had likely spent less than half an hour assessing her work.

Rebecca received a grade of 58 for her 8,000-word essay, which corresponds to a 2:2 classification. Adding to her disappointment, the length of her dissertation title alone is one-third of the size of her unsatisfactory 111-word feedback. Two weeks prior, Rebecca obtained a grade for her dissertation that remained unchanged from her original proposal, which she and her supervisor both disliked. They had extensively revised the entire proposal before submission.

She said: “I just assume they’ve just shoved in my proposal mark so it looks like I have a mark.”

Rebecca intends to pursue a Master’s degree at the University of Strathclyde, although this was not always guaranteed due to the provisional award she received.

The university initially assured students that these provisional awards would qualify them for postgraduate programs and employment opportunities. However, the university later retracted this statement and stated that they would consider accepting Rebecca into the Master’s program but could not provide confirmation.

During her graduation ceremony last Wednesday, Rebecca staged a protest against Strathclyde University’s distribution of provisional awards. She noticed on her ceremony program that more than half of the graduating students were not receiving official degrees, which she considered to be the “final straw.”

In a playful conversation with a classmate, Rebecca had joked about walking past the principal without getting capped, to which her classmate responded that they might think she didn’t know when to stop.

As a result, Rebecca decided to wear the sash around her waist and wrap it around her neck as she crossed the stage.

She said: “As I walked off the stage, I had so many members of staff and other students coming up and saying “how did you have the guts to do that” but also genuinely thanking me because the ceremony did not acknowledge what was going on. There was no explanation of why so many of us were graduating with this non-existent degree.”

Rebecca is one of the countless students across the UK who has graduated without a degree classification, and the lack of results is affecting future job prospects.

“I have course mates doing languages, French and Spanish, who have lost places for international study. And because, obviously, for UK universities across the board it’s the same situation, but universities in France or Spain where they’ve got 20 places and 50 applicants, they’re not going to look at the three applicants who have the provisional award.”Rebecca said that this experience has “definitely ruined” her graduation.

She said: “This should have been one of the biggest days of my life, graduating, marking the end of what for me has been five years of work.

“Instead, it just feels like an absolute betrayal from the university, especially when they’re posting about these ‘fantastic’ graduation ceremonies, and it’s like, I don’t even know what I got. I can’t celebrate something that I don’t have.”

The University of Strathclyde has been contacted for comment.

Source: thetab.com

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