Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email Well, “sympathy marks”, “marks for attendance”, “make-up tests/assignments”, “remarking” etc is quite common to pump up the marks. Which college/uni would like to be known as the place that fails students? Even students ask about passing rates before taking up courses. Some even admit that they enrol in certain colleges because easy to graduate.
Lecturers also will have to face the students next semester if they fail this semester. So, why waste time failing students, just pass them with minimum marks and send them off.
In the end, students want a scroll. College want money. Staff want salary.
But, if only 4 out 157 students passed as in the case below, then something seriously wrong. I have friends and contacts in education industry, but yet to hear of such poor passing rates from any of them. Its possible that the lecturer set too high a standard, or the quality of students are very poor. Being an Islamic university, attendance or discipline should not been an issue.
A UNIVERSITI Sains Islam Malaysia lecturer who passed only four out of 157 of her law students claims she was forced to resign so that the university could protect its reputation, Kosmo! reported.
Nor (not her real name) said the reason she left was because she could not stand the pressure from the university management on her to give “sympathy marks.”
“How am I to give extra marks if the marks they got is what they should be getting?” she said, adding that her downfall started when she received a show-cause letter on why so many students had failed.
She was then criticised by her superiors, who also wanted her to add marks based on attendance so as to reduce the number of failures.
“I stood my ground. How could I give them marks for that when it is their responsibility to show up for classes?” she added.
The university declined to comment.
