Getting into Varsity: Comparability, Convergence and Congruence ...

omission of calculus—essential for a coherent presentation of Newton's laws—and the second law of thermodynamics as examples of ‘dumbing down’. His view was that universities need to re-engage with the awarding bodies to ensure that students are reaching a certain standard before entering university. In the first instance, though, universities may need to engage with Ofqual, or its equivalent, which sets the subject criteria.

Controversy persists over the relative value of different A-Level subjects, both in terms of the relative grading standards (e.g., how difficult it is to obtain a grade A) and the educational value of the course content. For the benefit of potential applicants, a number of institutions, including the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Cambridge University, publish lists of A-Level subjects that they consider good preparation for their degree courses and those that they do not. Applicants taking more than one non-preferred subject are unlikely to be offered a place by these or other similarly esteemed institutions.

There are also broader concerns about the preparedness of new undergraduates. For example, in a recent article in The Times Education Supplement, a university Professor described a striking lack of initiative in many of his undergraduate students and argued that this is demonstrated in their inability to engage in intellectual conversation and to organise their thoughts in writing. He cited The Royal Literary Fund Report on Student Writing in Higher Education (which found that large numbers of recent British undergraduates lacked the ability to express themselves adequately in writing) as wider evidence of this deficiency, and he suggested that an overly prescriptive school curriculum is partly to blame for many students’ lack of inquisitiveness.

Current Developments and Future Directions

The university sector itself is currently experiencing something of a crisis of confidence in degree standards: the burgeoning number of upper second- and first-class degrees being awarded has led to accusations of creeping grade inflation and, in some cases, cynical overvaluation of students’ achievements to improve value-added performance figures.