Of Public Interest: How Universities can Abuse the Post-Grad Application System

Yesterday, I came across an email I was sent way back in July 2016 by the admin woman that non-Dutch prospective students had to deal with when applying to the (2 year full time, first year only taught, second year research) MRes Philosophy MA (2016-18). 

I was applying as an EU prospective student because the UK was still part of the EU and, at the time of applying, had no yet voted to leave the EU. So much for the notion that part of the advantage of being an EU Member State is to access opportunities to live and study across Europe, all under their wonderful respect for and observance of people's European Human Rights. And where could be more central to the principles of the EU bloc than the Netherlands, home to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the European Patent Office (EPO). 

I have decided to share it to raise awareness of something that is very much in the public interest, yet the topic is rarely ever discussed or brought to light in mainstream media: we may seem to have human rights laws and equality laws in the UK and the EU, and universities are public institutions that should always be in line with the anti-discrimination laws and stated principles of their country, simply trying their best to create educational and work opportunities and a wonderful experience for young people.  

But do you know what's actually going to impact the most on your experience of daily life within that university and course? The departmental and wider college admin staff. And they are hidden away and faceless until it's too late.

In my experience of universities, in terms of applying to study, studying or working for them as a researcher and/or lecturer perhaps the most important thing to analyse is the university's/ institution's admin. 

Parents and prospective students of all ages think you are meant to look at league tables, student experience stats, the academics, the research ranking of the university and department, the department itself, the course material, and additional features eg opportunities for scholarships, travel, work experience and so on. Yes, all very nice aspects of a course and university and it might hold true academically. I did that too when deciding to apply for my Philosophy BA: Is the department ranked high enough for the subject I want to study? Yes, the Birkbeck Philosophy department was one of the best university departments for philosophy in the country. And the university provides a London University Honours degree, which is an internationally renowned degree qualification because it's not only in the capital city of London, London University is in the prestigious 'Loxbridge Triangle' of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London. Both the university and the then philosophy department were very highly ranked for their research (Research Excellence Framework {REF}) and, when I applied, the academic staff was exclusively educated, at some point or other, at Oxbridge. So the academic standard of the lecturing and BA course should be exceptional, and it was. Their teaching was incredibly high, I don't think any other philosophy department in the UK (and perhaps internationally too, having now met numerous lecturers from universities around the world) provided such a rigorous course, subject content, and teaching. So I have very high academic expectations of university departments and courses, it's going to be very difficult for a university to convince me that they will sufficiently continue the Higher Education academic rigour I'm used to from my BA degree. The rigorous and solid basis they provided in their BA Philosophy degree is a huge part of why I'm a confident Independent Researcher in Philosophy now. This is even more rare these days, given that such a large and research intensive philosophy department is no longer provided by Birkbeck, since the department seriously thinned out the number of their academic staff and merged with two other departments. Furthermore, when I look at the frankly quite off-beat, lacking in detail and rigour and somewhat inaccurate research and teaching standard that many other lecturers and philosophy departments in the UK and abroad produce, I can understand why most students don't feel knowledgeable or prepared for the world of academic research. 

However, if you want to assess the quality, or lack of, your future day to day life at a university, the admin is the most vital department to look at and yet it's possibly the only section of a university that is never given a ranking, never talked about, never analysed at Open Days, never named and regulated in policies, nobody campaigns to improve admin standards of behaviour, it always relates to eg harassment between academic people, be it students or lecturers. Indeed, university admin are never even seen, until you're already on the inside of the application system or you're already signed up as a student, and you discover that it's the people in various sections of university admin that are behaving the most unprofessionally and inappropriately in your email inbox. 

Here's the admin email I received, that frankly should never be sent to any prospective student: 

Here the attached document: a letter that claims it's somehow "dealt with" by Alicja Sobecka from admin. Interestingly, it was never sent to my home address and, by her own admission, clashes with the wider college's admin (registration system) that was still sending me further registration information as though I'd been accepted. So how far the wider college was even aware of my application ending with her rejection letter is unclear. It strikes me as nonsense that any prospective student would need to withdraw an already rejected application, especially after already receiving what appears to be an official decision letter. You only need to withdraw an active application prior to a decision letter (and that would only be due to your personal choice to change your mind about applying there), or to withdraw after being excepted to get a refund because you no longer wish to study there. 

Both the email and the letter may try to give an air of a neutral, professional tone but it's riddled with discrimination and factual inaccuracies. This includes the statement that there were no references: One of my referees emailed me to let me know he had submitted his reference. So I have written evidence that "no letters of recommendation were submitted" is a lie. We all know why their references were not strictly speaking "submitted along with the application". My referees (all male lecturers who had marked my degree work and had direct professional tutorial teaching and marking responsibilities) refused to comply with the standard application system at the University of Groningen whereby the referee must send the prospective student applicant the reference for them to upload to their own online portal system that processes their application. It was Sobecka's professional responsibility to add their references to my application folder herself before she passed it to the Board, and I had assurance during the application process that this is what definitely would be done and that if it wasn't, the Head of Department (Martin Lenz) or Sobecka would let me know in advance so I could replace that referee with another before their decision meeting and letter. 

Nevertheless, an alternative referee would never have been Professor Susan James at any point, for any reason, because she was, and remains to this day, not eligible to be a referee for me. According to Birkbeck themselves (and as stated in my student handbook for my BA Philosophy degree), your referee from that degree must be someone who has been your allocated dissertation supervisor, your tutorial tutor who has marked your work, or, at a stretch, for certain types of applications, you may use your allocated past personal tutor. Susan James never held the job of being my dissertation supervisor, my tutorial tutor or my personal tutor, so she is ineligible and no amount of arguing changes that true and lasting fact. She didn't even so much as become a temporary substitute for any of my tutorial tutors or personal tutors, so even a stretch of the imagination won't help you claim otherwise. 

Underneath her signature, she's also referred me to the CLRS, which is a legal system for internal students that, if you read about it on their website, makes no mention of prospective students or appealing/complaining about a decision made about a external application for one of their university qualifications. Furthermore, I don't see any reason for her writing 'LLM Groningen', when LLM standardly refers to a Masters degree in Law, never an MRes in Philosophy. 

Here's a photo of a document on the University of Groningen website, dated only a few years after I applied (2020), with a description of the MRes Philosophy admission requirements:

And the admission requirement description hasn't changed to this day. Here's how it reads on their website today, 8th November 2024:

My BA Philosophy degree academic transcript is comfortably within these grade requirements. All my grades for all my modules are a 2:1 so within the Dutch equivalent of 7.5, and I received a 1st for exams and extended essay work (similar to coursework). My thesis was not just a 2:1 but received a 68, so it is so high within that category (65-69), it borders a 1st. This means that it clearly fulfils the requirement, clarified in the 2020 document, of corresponding to "roughly an A/A- in the US system". Hence, although a Dutch 8 is often roughly equated to a 1st in the UK, it's clearly not taken to strictly mean only applicants with an American A or a British 1st. When it comes to assessing grades, a British 2:1 Hons in the range of a 68 clearly meets the bracket of an A-, which even in their own description, is only a rough, flexible guide. Here's a screenshot that proves that my 2:1 (68) is objectively, comfortably within an A- 

Hence, when Sobecka refers to my "educational background", she cannot actually be referring to my BA Honours degree grades, although she'd like to give that impression. The Netherlands basically doesn't allow Home Education as an alternative educational system to attending a school, bar a few exemptions such as, religious reasons; mental or physical disability, none of which apply to me. Therefore, the Netherlands obviously discriminates against home educated people, even when, like me, they have excellent school level qualifications. I have good grades for my 3 and ½ A Levels (3 AS's, 2 A2's; equivalent European Baccalaureate) which meant I entered university as an undergraduate with more than enough UCAS points for a BA applicant of any age and even more so as a mature student, to give me a range of excellent universities and degrees to apply to. Oxford University was obviously interested.