A Lose-Lose Situation: Perspectives from the Marking Boycott

Photo Courtesy: Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

 *The names of students, teachers and staff members have not been included in this article to protect their identities.

This September marked the graduation of the 2023 UCL cohort. After years of online learning and social isolation prompted by COVID-19, all whilst paying full university fees, was it fair for the students of 2023 to also graduate without grades?

The marking boycott, which ended last month, was the most recent strike in a long line of industrial action that has affected the UCL community since 2018. 

One graduate horror story follows a law student who received zero marks on results day. This was after an extremely anxiety-ridden exam season for the student who relayed, “I was put on a few medications during exam season because of how bad my anxiety got. I was throwing up at night and having nightmares so I put a lot on these exams”. She explained that her graduate position was contingent on her degree, adding “When I saw that I had zero marks I felt sick again. I was in a state of almost constant panic for a few days”.

Affiliate and international students also returned home with incomplete transcripts. One international student was unable to renew her student visa for postgraduate studies in the UK without her degree, and had to take an impromptu trip home in order to process the renewal. 

Due to the confusion of the situation, many partner universities lacked understanding and sympathy for affiliate students who finished their year abroad with no grades to attest. UCL administrative staff informed us that many affiliates desperately needed the grades to graduate back home, and explained how intricately the situation had to be navigated, often on a case by case basis.  

One administrative staff who chose not to strike explained that they felt it would be too unfair to students, and could see its impact to a greater degree because of their close contact with students. 

Conversely, a professor explained that striking was a “no-brainer” due to the degradation of their working conditions. Teaching salaries are falling behind inflation, essentially meaning yearly pay cuts while workloads and job insecurity increase. The issue of significant pay gaps stemming from gender, race and disabilities also remains unaddressed. This staff member had not been paid almost 2 months into the term without even a working contract to fall back on. From their perspective, the situation has become untenable to the point that striking is their only way to stand up to university management.

Another professor disclosed that the reason behind the summer boycott was that the teaching term had come to a close, and the University College Union (UCU) had exhausted all forms of negotiations with their employers, resulting in a last-ditch effort to make their voices heard. 

However, staff also faced significant repercussions due to the boycott. An exam board administrator felt held in “limbo”, not knowing when the boycott would end or which departments would participate, limiting their ability to prepare during the marking season. Further revelations indicate that not only did staff go unpaid during the boycott, UCL management had also taken a punitive approach towards striking staff, such as threatening 50% pay deductions and hiring under-qualified examiners, severely undermining the quality of education at UCL.

It is important to recognize the complex, multifaceted ripple-effect the boycott had throughout UCL. Whilst acknowledging that the impact on student progression was severe, we can understand why the escalation to a marking boycott was a necessary action from teachers, whose futures are also threatened by the lack of meaningful responses from universities. 

One student’s final statement perhaps reflects the prevailing feeling of many students: “I think we all empathise a lot with academics and support whatever they need to do. It is nonetheless frustrating to be in the middle of a battle between UCL and the academics and it feels like more could have been done to communicate with us at least”.