Science Council criticises ‘lenient’ marking

By Michael Gardner. Germany’s chief policy advisory body on higher education issues, the Wissenschaftsrat (WR – Science and Humanities Council), has criticised grading practice at universities. While grade averages between universities or between subjects vary considerably, there is too little spread at institution level within individual subjects, the WR argues.
“The mark you get on graduating depends not only on examination attainment but also on what you are studying and where you are studying it,” said WR Chairman Wolfgang Marquardt. The council, whose membership comprises politicians and leading representatives of higher education, evaluated all available data on exam results at German universities in 2010.
The WR also noted that a trend towards better grades being awarded that it had already identified in previous years appeared to be confirmed by the 2010 results, especially in the bachelor programmes, where four out of five students were awarded ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ marks. For example, taking the results for the old Diplom degrees that are being phased out, 98% of graduates from biology had ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ marks in the survey, and so did 97% in psychology. By contrast, just 7% of law students attained these marks. In the corresponding new bachelor programmes, the figures were 84%, 95% and 37% respectively. Bachelor degrees accounted for just under a third of all successful exams in 2010. Various reasons are given for the trend towards good marking at university level. Read more...