Teach students how to fail, says Fields Medallist

It is a simple theme but very important. As Careers Consultants, we seem to spend time reassuring students and graduates about their job and placement applications - you should expect a degree of rejection and use this to shape your future applications (ideally on the basis of constructive feedback). I was just discussing this with some of my academic colleagues the other day - we have a duty to remind students that critique does not equal criticism, so they should not shy away from addressing perceived failures.

But yet in the UK, you have policies that prevent failing among undergraduates - policies like 'compensatable fail' and upward (never downward) grade adjustments (grade inflation). Exacerbating people's narcissistic self image (i.e., everyone is good at everything). This even occurs at 'A' levels: a recent leak of A level Maths was that scoring above 55% was an 'A' grade. 55%! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49347539

This post from Professor Figalli is helpful; but I fear that many within the sector will not appreciate the message, well not publicly anyway. The sector is awash with those who consider that 'fail' is just another four letter word that should never be used. Many of these are retired academics now running modern universities or those non academics advising them.