A qualification tells the public what a person has achieved. It might also give an assurance about what a person is competent to do. It is because the public needs a common currency of qualifications that national frameworks for school, vocational and higher education qualifications are being developed. If a qualification is to be sub-divided to represent differing levels of achievement, there should be a common and understood basis for that sub-division.
Degree classification fails miserably to offer a common yardstick. It is not consistent over time. Thirty years ago, an average performance in a cohort of 10 per cent of the age group was likely to be rewarded by a 2.2. Now, an average performance in a cohort three times the size might well produce a 2.1.
Degree classification is not consistent among institutions and there are no agreed criteria across all institutions and subjects. It is not even consistent within individual institutions. Some departments seem to take perverse pride in awarding hardly any firsts, while others appear to err on the side of generosity.
Grading decisions may be highly subjective. When challenged to be more specific about what made a paper "feel" like a first-class performance, a professor of modern languages is reputed to have said that it had a certain "je ne sais quoi".
It is easy to joke about grading decisions, but to students they are of vital importance. Selection for a job or progression to a professional qualification may depend on them. The arbitrariness and inaccuracy of the system is indefensible. Academics will admit privately that degree classification is an unreliable means of choosing between students who have followed different programmes at different institutions. Yet no one wants to be the first to break ranks and admit that the emperor has no clothes.
Degree classification may have had a validity in narrowly focused, single-subject programmes, where there was unlikely to be much variation in individual performance in different elements of the programme. It has little validity as a measure of achievement in a modular, multidisciplinary programme. At best, it represents an average, with the potential to conceal both strengths and weaknesses.
We cannot go on pretending that the degree classification system is that which it is not. If it were merely a means of ranking students in a single subject, in a single year, at a single institution, it would be harmless. But it is not. It is the key to career progression, yet it bears a weight for which it was not designed.
Sooner or later, the system will be found out. If a 2.1 becomes the norm, then the system becomes self-defeating, and employers will demand a reliable means of discriminating between applicants for jobs.
It is time for higher education to seize the initiative and to admit that the degree classification system has had its day. It is an inadequate and poorly calibrated means of representing student achievement. Few other countries use the system. And where competence really matters - in medicine for example - degrees are not classified.
There is a better way. For several years, some universities have maintained more comprehensive records of achievement that run alongside the classification system. These transcripts have the potential to convey a fuller and fairer picture of the richness and diversity of attainment of individuals.
Let us look to the future. Transcripts offer a sensible way ahead. They allow outstanding performance to be recorded with more precision and accuracy. They enable employers to select on aspects of performance that matter to them, not on a meaningless average.
Subject benchmarks, programme specifications and the qualifications framework can all inform transcripts and give them credibility and reliability. It is time for higher education to abandon degree classification and to offer instead a currency of real value to describe the attainments of graduates.