A criminology professor is suggesting that "variant" (i.e. wrong) spellings of common words should be accepted as correct. Professor Ken Smith of Bucks New University (no, neither had I, but it's in High Wycombe) is apparently fed up with correcting elementary spelling errors in his students' essays -- truely, ignor, things like that. He wants to be allowed to ignor, sorry, ignore them.
I've never taught in a university, but I have interviewed hundreds of newly-graduated job seekers. It's frustrating to know that a lot of them may have very limited writing or math skills even after a university education. You have to go to a lot of effort to try to identify the competent ones before you take the giant leap of hiring them. Now Prof Smith is proposing to throw his hands up entirely and leave prospective employers even more in the dark about the basic skills of the people they may be hiring. Not that he's doing anyone any favours -- Bucks New University may be cool with bad spelling, but employers won't be. Guess what, kid: you got five devalued A grades at A-level and now you've got a degree that nobody trusts.
I'm pretty sure that Bucks New U wasn't there in those paleolithic days when I was applying for university. All of these new "universities" have been funded by the government in order to make the benefits of higher education available to a much higher proportion of the UK's youth. If a lot of the teachers think like Ken Smith, it's probably a waste of public money.
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