Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Evening all,

A colleague in higher ed mentioned some issues relating to concerns their uni has about a particular student. And while I won't go into the details (and I have no idea who the student is) something my friend said reverberated in my brain. They said (words to the effect of) "Everyone has felt sorry for this student, all the way along." And now the student is nearing the end of their degree, and the uni is concerned they've cheated swathes of it. Time will tell on that score, but I'll never know either way.

But back to feeling sorry. I've observed this in so many respects in my travels through academia, and often the common thread (at least as far as I can tell, receiving the detritus of uhhh fallible decisions and choices across a university) is that all of those wonderful impulses, the essential humanity of each tiny decision to "help students through", to take what often amounts to wildly off-policy avenues, often comes back to bite us all in the arse.

I'll give you an example. I've noticed that professional degree placements (Medicine, psych, education) are often fraught. While noting that my view is shaped by instances where it all goes Pete Tong, so often failure in a placement- which is a high consequence fail- is preceded by staff acting on their best impulses, "helping the student", but not balancing these impulses with actions that address issues that they know of with the student. When chairing appeals on these cases, I often find pre-existing concerns about a student, which haven't really been raised, and when it all heads south the student can feel blindsided. It can also be the case that a student has failed to read between the lines, but my question is whether they should have to. From my perspective, students should be advised, unequivocally, of issues that staff have with their performance, behaviour, etc. We can't control whether students have the self-awareness to take the feedback on board, but at least we have exercised our duty of care to the student, and the student can't pretend they didn't know. This seems obvious to me, but again- my perspective is unusual.

While we're on the topic of raising issues, it is also the case that when I ask for more information about a situation, I'll be told "we held a meeting", and when I ask whether there are any notes the inevitable sheepish look appears, and in return I drop this one:

There is a general unawareness among staff (of all stripes) that NEARLY EVERY DECISION made by a university regarding a student is a decision a student can appeal or make a complaint about (at least in Australia). From the Higher Education Standards Framework (2.4) "Current and prospective students have access to mechanisms that are capable of resolving grievances about any [my emphasis] aspect of their experience with the higher education provider, its agents or related parties."

So this means that rather than having everything as an academic decision, nearly every decision academics consider unchallengeable is, in fact, very challengeable indeed, and not an academic decision at all.

So, that being the case, if you are an academic who deals with things anywhere beyond your direct teaching/assessing/marking, I have a few suggestions for you.

1. Read the fucking policy. Your vibes-based decision making will make you look incompetent and careless to anyone who doesn't run on vibes (me). I know you're probably not (there are exceptions), but appeal decisions run on cold facts.

2. By all means, be empathetic and supportive, but don't chicken out. Students often arrive where they are through their own actions or inactions. We need to be honest with ourselves, and with them, when they are headed to a bad spot, and when they land there.

3. Don't wait. Expecting that someone else will pick up an issue with a student later down the track is a sure-fire way to land everyone in the shit. Hold that meeting. Send an email, have a chat. Do something! But make sure you at least emailed your thoughts to yourself at the time. Day/time/place, what was said. Evidence matters. And it will save you a lot of pain if the student goes sideways.

   
   

The number of furious academics who can't believe that I uphold an appeal just because they went off-piste policy-wise, didn't make any records of anything that was done or said, and were outraged when my decision points these things out and overrules their "academic opinion"...well...it's a lot.

One final point, if you don't like the policy, rewrite it! Or at least contribute to rewriting it. We, you and I, can affect change if we think there's a problem with policy. We can't solve rampant corruption and avarice in our unis, but we can fix problems. Indeed, good policy requires people who know the policy and the problems inside out, and develop new policy to try to fix them. I've written several policies/procedures myself, just so I could fix things that didn't work, ones that gave me the shits. Give it a go, you never know your luck in a big city.

Until next time, KM