Many students submit assignments semester to semester, unit to unit and receive their results in the usual two week window — with little to no idea how their tutor marks the essay or report, how much feedback they can give, or even the time they can spend on it.
Speaking to multiple tutors, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), and the University, Honi Soit stepped through a patchwork system full of disputes and confusion.
Dotting the lines
There are three marking codes that determine how much a tutor is paid for any given assignment: M05, M04 and M03. There are two main factors which determine whether the marking approach should be classified as M05, M04, or M03 include: whether the tutor has a PhD or equivalent subject and whether the assignment requires “significant academic judgement”.
The table below contains relevant categorising factors and the rates for each of those codes, with the M03 code, as the highest rate, sitting at $20 an hour more than the lowest rate, M05 — a significant difference for tutors.
What constitutes “significant academic judgement,” is subject to dispute. Tutors have told Honi that even large essays at the undergraduate level, say for 3000-level English or History courses, do not fit the category. A University spokesperson also told us that undergraduate work in most cases was not considered M03. Despite this, such lengthy essays, written by students in their third year of their major, would likely require “significant academic judgement” for accurate assessment.
Honi reported recently that new guidelines were being pushed onto FASS unit coordinators that tutors should be paid M04 or M05 for essays. The introduction of more rubrics and explicit guidelines when marking assignments has been used to ensure tutors cannot make a claim they are exercising “significant academic judgement.”
The current consensus seems to be that M03 marking is only being consistently used when providing feedback for postgraduate or Honours work, and even then, some tutors told us M04 and M05 marking codes were also prominent in those areas.
The current Enterprise Agreement between the NTEU and the University, which sets out the guidelines, says that “comments on postgraduate assignments or postgraduate examination papers, and or large bodies of work such as Honours or post-graduate papers,” fall into the higher pay category.
Tutors have suggested to Honi that there is no real room for interpretation there — the vast majority of postgraduate work should not be paid at the lower rate and that a tutor does not need a PhD to be paid the correct M03 rate.
The marker is mightier than the grading
Honi spoke to tutors who delved into the average experience of markers. They immediately noted that after COVID-19 there was a noticeably slow but consistent implementation of standardised rubrics. While rubrics are now “granular” and include smaller details, it remains labour intensive for them to be implemented for each assessment.
When it comes to simple extensions, the same rubric as the original submission box has to be theoretically applied for the extension box. Sometimes slips occur, where some students “might be getting marked against a completely different set of criteria” and the only way to avoid this is through a manual process that takes hours.
One tutor, Jack*, spoke in relation to casual workers, who are allocated one hour, per student, per course for marking. Besides basic training modules on how to use Speed Grader, which fulfils the technological side of training, tutors have had to navigate rubrics on their own with limited and targeted training on how to mark. Tutors do rely on informal advice from meetings including what to look for, what to flag and what may be considered a problem in the paper. They have also figured out a default mark for work that is not considered a distinction or with “clear merits” within a range of 67-72. Most markers are PhD students who do not have formal training in a classroom.
When asked if tutors are taught about the difference between M03, M04 and M05 pay codes, Jack said “yes and no”. Upon receiving an initial contract, it is explicit as to what code should be claimed and the online teaching allocation database is also clear, despite it being a “pain to use.” Jack also said that it would be confusing “as to how someone would make a mistake” with regards to the different codes.
Jack also specified that “[until] you have your graduation” tutors completing their PhD do not receive a M04 rate as the Enterprise Agreement specifies that M04 “is payable if an individual holds a relevant PhD, and/or has responsibility for the coordination of the unit of study being taught.”
While it is rare that tutors consider wage thefting themselves or focus less attention on one work, “looking at borderline fails or HDs take a long time to justify either direction, because that has an impact on the student.”
If one assignment takes longer, Jack stated that they just “take the loss” because they need to maintain their job and focus on bigger issues.
“You owe that student the time, whether it’s paid or not.”
It was also revealed that for assignments involving videos/podcasts, there usually has to be a written component even though the mark entails both the video submission and written work.
When asked if there should be a pay code in between the existing codes to address the discrepancies, Jack admitted that “fewer pay codes would be better on the whole” especially as filling out a timesheet requires an hour of unpaid labour.
Ruby* felt that the word-to-time ratio was off saying that she and “fellow tutors have often had the experience of having a specific word count listed on the unit outline (e.g., 250 words)” and are then given an assignment rubric permitting students to “submit 250-500 words, with some even going up to ~900 at times.”
They explained that this means marking is more difficult, especially when there is a large volume of assignments over a shorter period of time.
With regards to the general sentiment amongst tutors and across faculties, Law and STEM experiences which “look nothing like” that of the Arts and Social Sciences. Not only do they have classes with demonstrations instead of tutorial experiences, but there is a “slow decay in unit offerings especially for people who are really highly specialised.”
Because most Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students are international, tutors often become entirely reliant on their teaching income unless they are able to find additional work. This is also exacerbated by what Jack believes is “a universal use of prejudice against international students, which translates into allocation of work for casuals.” Equity problems, poor language support, and neurodivergent writing practices were also identified as areas requiring further consideration.
Why students should care
As students, we like to think that ‘we are more than our marks’. However, these percentages and grades not only guide our learning experience but our future outside of academic life.
Jack explained that he always tried to tell their first-year students that marks can determine entry into graduate programs. Whether that be in government or corporate roles like Qantas, graduate programs “begin from a distinction… as the low bar for entry.” Consequently, marking becomes a mutual process in which students and tutors work together rather than something tutors embark on by themselves — “the more support tutors have to act as educators, the more likely it is that students can do well.”
“If I was a student, and even if I didn’t care about my marks, it would still concern me. I’m not getting a fair hearing because the person being paid to assess my work might not necessarily have time or space to do so adequately,” Jack added.
They also drew attention to the fact that students are emboldened to question marks on specifics more than they have witnessed before, labelled as a symptom of “the business transactional model of the university.” This was also viewed as a sign that students feel greater ownership over their degree and are increasingly proactive, seeking clarity over their results.
Since marking is not only dictated by “individual tutors’ choices” but by a broader system at work, a need for students to “funnel their complaints to the people and places where it actually matters” was identified by Mary*, another tutor. She explained that as a result of this, student requests asking for additional feedback “end up directly in individual tutors’ emails, and we’re not the ones who are making these decisions.” They identified the need for students to know about the marking process so that they can complain to Management which may help advocate for fairer time allocations and pay codes.
“Management get[s] away with these pay code discrepancies by relying on casual tutors to put a lot of effort into marking without complaint, because they can say ‘oh well you are only supposed to give an overall mark, and select the preset rubric points’.”
These tutor experiences indicate that it may be time for students to start seeing marks as not just a way to pass our units but something in dialogue with tutors that potentially differentiates you in a competitive job market.
NTEU response and campaign
The NTEU is currently campaigning to reform the marking code system, with multiple Union members telling Honi that any discussion with the University has to be placed in the broader context of wage theft in the tertiary sector.
The union has estimated wage theft nationally has surpassed $384 million and while there is no suggestion the majority of that figure is intentional, tutors are under increased pressure while these disputes continue.
Essential to the campaign is also to just educate students. Tutors across the board have told us that they can receive multiple emails from students asking why feedback was so minimal. The average student perceives the time a tutor can spend on each essay as much lower than it actually is.
The union is also concerned about how the marking codes, even if the pay is increased, have other impacts on how academics do their job. Jack pointed out that although in the English department, many academics with PhDs get teaching roles, while those in other universities don’t because that increases costs.
According to Jack, academics losing out on teaching experience not only makes them less “competitive on the job market,” but it also impacts their quality of research. “People who are completing PhDs are getting no teaching experience so they might do five or six years of a humanities project but never get the teaching experience.”
In a statement to Honi, a university spokesperson said that “our faculties oversee the engagement of tutors and education on pay codes and allocations in line with the Enterprise Agreement and Work Classification and Paycode Guidelines for Casual Academic Staff (Paycode Guidelines).
“The University is also leading education sessions for all casual academics on the Enterprise Agreement, the Paycode Guidelines and different paycode allocations that will commence this month.”
They noted that the University is looking into queries raised by tutors that assignments are being classified incorrectly. The spokesperson did not present further comment on the NTEU campaign, and referred back to their answer to the NTEU about the use of the rates in early July.
Finola Laughren, Casuals Representative for the USyd NTEU branch highlighted that per the enterprise agreement, “the M03 rate is a higher rate of marking pay that casuals need to be paid…each time we mark assessments at the honours level or above, as well as any time we mark an assessment requiring a significant exercise of academic judgement, regardless of whether that assessment is for an undergraduate or postgraduate course.
“Management are wilfully misinterpreting the relevant clause in the enterprise agreement that covers the M03 marking rate in order to — yet again — avoid paying casuals properly.”
Laughren continued, “casuals are also not paid a sufficient number of hours for marking. In the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, tutors are expected to read, grade, provide engaged feedback and deal with any academic integrity issues at a rate of 4,500 words/hour. It is an open secret in FASS that this is just not possible.
Students should know, and care, that their tutors are being systematically underpaid for marking because this directly impacts the quality and quantity of feedback they receive on assessments…Casuals are passionate educators who care deeply about our students; for us, this is an impossible choice.”
Nick Riemer, President of the USyd NTEU branch reiterated this, saying that “Ending wage theft is a major priority for the NTEU. It’s simply disgraceful that this rich institution with its extravagantly paid senior leaders is intent on exploiting its most precarious staff.”
Marked as read
The enduring purpose of a degree has and will always be to gain the knowledge and skills to begin working professionally. Therefore, students should understand the reality of the marking process to be able to recognise the disadvantages faced by tutors during the marking process. While the work is still marked, many questions will remain unanswered.
*Names have been changed for anonymity.
