'Escape goats' and 'laxative enforcement policies'

[Sweetpea]

University students have received a very public ticking-off from dons who published their exam blunders in a newspaper competition.

The embarrassing slip-ups taken from undergraduates' tests and finals papers included bungled references to 'laxative enforcement policies' and 'escape goats'.

It came as an outspoken academic warned that the expansion of higher education has led to the dumbing-down of standards at every level of the country's higher education system.

He spoke out as staff at universities including Southampton, City and the West of England exposed students' most verbal shortcomings, including the argument by an economics student at City University, London, that Northern Rock's troubles were partly down to 'laxative enforcement policies' by watchdogs.


Meanwhile in an apparent Freudian slip, a student at the University of Southampton argued that 'tackling climate change will require an unpresidented response'.

Rob Stewart, at the University of the West of England, Bristol, was confident his students would be able to spell 'alcohol'. So he was surprised when one ventured 'alchol'.


Other undergraduates sitting the university's anatomy paper wrote 'whom' for 'womb' and 'abominous' instead of 'abdominal'.


Meanwhile, when Dave Harrison of St Helens College of Art and Design asked students to outline the importance of the railway in 19th-century Britain, one answered:

'The railways were invented to bring the Irish from Dublin to Liverpool, where they were promptly arrested for being vagrants.'

Another said: 'The railways were invented to take the weight off the motorways.'


Chris Holloway, a retired professor at the University of the West of England, submitted several to the competition run by the Times Higher Education magazine.

The prize for the most appalling howler goes to Bath Spa University teaching fellow Greg Garrard, who submitted one literature student's insight into the work of author Margaret Atwood.

It claimed: 'The Handmaid's Tale shows how patriarchy treats women as escape goats.'

Previous years' entries have brought such gems as the student who shed new light on the likely effects of BSE, or mad cow disease, on cattle, saying: 'Their language has no deeper meaning ... cows just moo for the sake of it.'


'Escape goats' and 'laxative enforcement policies' - student howlers in age of 'dumbed down' degrees | Mail Online


You expect this from junior school kids...

[Bernie]

Did somebody tell me GCSE's and O Levels were getting harder? If these are answers from so called university students I find that hard to believe!!

[Haqa]

I don't believe they are getting harder, it's just that students are finding them harder to pass because our entire education system is being "dumbed down", not just higher ed.

H.

[Sweetpea]

If they are getting 'easier', it is more likely that the information required is easier to come by. No waiting for library books etc.

[Churchill]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Rob Stewart, at the University of the West of England, Bristol, was confident his students would be able to spell 'alcohol'. So he was surprised when one ventured 'alchol'.
..

Even HE is in Academe now? Still, his last two albums were shite.