Students taking the strain
The University’s decision to award unfinished degrees will come as a relief for those students who faced not being able to graduate this summer, but with it will come a new batch of problems.
No one can predict how employees will treat graduates qualifications that they know not to be completely marked, and many students from the year across the country will be in a similar predicament, but degrees that have been the product of three years or more of hard work and major financial investment will now be tainted.
The AUT have unsurprisingly decided to continue their strike and chosen not to be swayed by the latest University response, and the rights and wrongs of this decision will be no consolation to the students whose education is suffering. The dispute between lecturers and their employees is a difficult situation, and with it has come a long period of resentment, anger and misinformation from both sides.
Seemingly we are no closer to a settlement, and students need to be reassured that they aren’t going to continue to be forced to suffer the consequences.
