missing marks scandle in universities

Mary Njoki expected to graduate two years ago. She has not. Reason? Something known in university parlance as “missing marks.”

This refers to the phenomenon where students’ examination results disappear without a trace. The problem has become so widespread that many students get nervous as they wait for their marks after end-of-semester exams as the possibility of not getting the results of one or two units is real.

It is even more worrying that this is happening in both public and private universities.

That is what befell Njoki. All attempts she and her family have made to retrieve the results for one unit have failed. The problem has delayed her graduation for two years.

She is hoping to graduate this year after the chairman of the department promised to have the problem resolved.

With employers asking fresh graduates to produce both transcripts and final certificates, getting employment has become a challenge for Njoki.

BUREAUCRACY

She is not the only one in this predicament. Many other students are affected. In some universities, the procedure for finding redress can be a long and winding journey.

“The student has to go through a bureaucratic system to get a solution,” says a senior lecturer at a public university who requested anonymity because he is not authorised to speak for the institution.

The student, he explains, has to write a complaint letter to the lecturer concerned, who should respond within two weeks. The lecturer will then establish if the student is indeed in the class registry, then proceed to confirm that the affected student sat for the said exam.

If all this is ascertained, the student is referred to the responsible examination officer. This is the person whose responsibilities include taking custody of marked exam booklets.

Should the examination officer fail to trace the student’s answer booklet in question, he/she will refer the student to the chairman of the department. If the matter is not resolved at that level, it is escalated to the dean of the school.

'FORGED' EXAM RESULTS

At every stage, the student has to wait for at least two weeks to get a response. The procedure can, therefore, take months or, for the unlucky ones like Njoki, more than a year.

At the end of the long road, if the the dean is satisfied that the student has a case, he orders the lecturer to ensure that the student gets marks for the affected unit or units. Once so directed, it is up to the lecturer to decide how to go about awarding the student marks.

“Each student has to sign in during an exam. So, if the student indeed sat for the paper and signed for it, then the lecturer has to come up with marks for the student,” says the senior lecturer.

This may introduce the issue of “forged” exam results. “One lecturer decided to give me an ‘A’ for a unit because he could not trace my marks. Some students are not so lucky. Many lecturers prefer to give a ‘C’,” says Fridah Langat, currently in her third year at a public university.

According to the senior lecturer we spoke to, various factors that can lead to misplaced or missing marks.

SEXUAL FAVOURS

The lecturer could be withholding the results for one reason or another. Rose Njeri, a student, alleges that sometimes that happens when the concerned lecturer wants to use the marks as bait for sexual favours from a particular student.

“Believe me, it is happening. The lecturer does not propose to the lady when still teaching her. They withhold the marks and ask for sexual favours two or three months after the she has completed the unit,” Njeri alleges.

In one university, students are suspicious of a particular lecturer, who, they claim, has several cases of “missing marks.” The lecturer, the students claim, is notorious for withholding the marks of female students in order to use them to solicit sexual favours.

We could not independently establish these allegations.

Sometimes the answer booklets are fairly misplaced. “It is common to find answer booklets from one department in a different department. Because each department takes care of their own marks, you find that these booklets are ignored and with time, they are thrown out. The marks are not recorded and the students affected end up missing the marks,” says the lecturer.

EXAM OFFICERS

This is further complicated by the digitisation of the results, adds the senior don.

The duration between the time the lecturer marks the exams and the time the marks are fed into the system can be long. Once the papers have been reviewed by internal examiners, they are re-examined by an external exam officer.

In many of the public universities, the exam officers review all the exam papers once a year. Therein lies a problem, according to the don.

He says: “If I administered an exam in January and the external exam officer comes in September, chances that some answer booklets might be lost are high.”

The subsequent uploading of results onto the school server for online access then follows with its own challenges in the form of mix-up and other errors.

Ms Langat says she has results for subjects she did not take. “I am sure the owner of those results is missing some marks and the lecturer will probably have to forge results for them.”