Law student suing Cambridge University after failing PhD
Even, a practical test. Win the case and you get your PhD by showing competence.
A law student is suing Cambridge University for discrimination after he failed his PhD, claiming the decision denied him a lucrative job as a barrister.
Jacob Meagher did not pass his final “viva voce” oral examination of his doctoral thesis, meaning he missed out on a place at a set of chambers, the High Court was told.
He is now seeking “substantial damages” from the world-famous institution, arguing he should have been given an alternative way of achieving a PhD.
Although, erm. Not being able to think and speak on your feet might be disqualifying as a barrister?
As Jacob is a white male with no ‘protected characteristics’ (ginger beard isn’t on the list…) he’s got no chance.
Don’t you normally get into Chambers with just yer normal bog standard undergraduate law degree?
And isn’t a PhD awarded for increasing the net amount of knowledge by original discovery? How on earth do you “find something new” in law? Law by definition is that that is written down by lawmakers. So, it’s *already* known.
It’s about time students at all levels had it made clear to them that their “contract” with a university isn’t for a degree but a chance to earn a degree, and if they don’t get one that’s because they weren’t good enough.
jgh
Statute law is written but can still be interpreted differently. Common law relies on general principles and on precedent, so under Common Law the law can be discovered.
If they keep discovering new law, does it get cheaper ?
Sounds like he’s ideally qualified to be DPP material, although Jacob would be advised not to walk to Chambers in London,,,
Not exactly Rumpole of the Bailey
And how the hell is that supposed to work in court once the geezer has acquired a “lucrative job as a barrister”?
Or was that supposed to be “barista”?
How on earth do you “find something new” in law?
“Supreme Courts” seem to be quite good at it, when it suits them.
“Not being able to think and speak on your feet might be disqualifying as a barrister?”
Didn’t hold our Keir back, unless he’s lost some of the old magic.
He’s got previous…
“Mr Meagher, who first qualified in New Zealand in 2016, was called to the Bar in England and Wales in November 2018
He applied for appointments as a deputy district judge in both 2021 and 2022 – for which he needed five years’ post-call experience – but claimed he had been told by a member of staff at the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) that his experience in New Zealand would count. The staff member denied this.”
How can he afford to go to law? Is he relying on a no-win, no-fee solicitor?
If I were an academic invited to act as an examiner to the likes of this chap I’d decline the invitation.
If I understand the facts right he was offered the chance to resubmit his thesis but obtained an injunction preventing the university from doing so in order to help him.
Mr Meagher, a qualified barrister since 2016, said:
So……….,he got there anyway.
I guess i’d better be very careful about what I say in this case as the gentleman is not backwards when it comes to sueing.
Do we know the title of his thesis?
“Don’t you normally get into Chambers with just yer normal bog standard undergraduate law degree?”
That’s what I thought. I’m not even sure that, strictly speaking, you need one at all (although in practical terms these days you probably do). My dad, a fairly prominent Scots lawyer, always said that our Advocates were bad enough, but down south they let any idiot be a Barrister.
“Mr Meagher, a qualified barrister since 2016, said:”
QED.
“Don’t you normally get into Chambers with just yer normal bog standard undergraduate law degree?”
May have changed since my day (’83), but you would then have to go on the the Inns of Court School of Law for a year before taking – and passing – the exams to get called. Followed by a years pupillage; the real winnower.
(Law degree not necessary. Mine was in politics, but needed to do a year’s conversion course)
No less than 6 students committed suicide at the University of Cambridge (in the space of months in 2022) – all of which were students from marginalised groups (be it race or disability): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-65311284
The University has been condemned by its Student Union for failure to safeguard its students: https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/24028
It has been widely reported that the University has failed it’s disabled students:
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/25862
https://www.varsity.co.uk/comment/24328
An external body has written a very critical report about the the University’s Examination Access and Mitigation Committee (EAMC), the body that handles the University’s reasonable adjustments applications for disabled students (legally required reasonable adjustments): SUMS Consulting: Review of the university’s approach to examination and assessment adjustments, allowances and mitigation: Final Report October 2023
I would suggest that the general population would do a bit a digging before coming to any conclusion; being prestigious does not make the University infallible.
If disabled students keep topping themselves stop admitting them until you’ve worked out the cause(s) and decided on rational courses of action.
If the main problem turns out to be sane students toppling into schizophrenia I don’t know if there’s anything effective to be done. I had to deal with two cases in my career as an academic and I can tell you it’s heart-breaking – the parents distraught, the poor victims bewildered and scared. But all the sympathy in the world provides no solution. I can vouch that every academic and administrator involved behaved humanely.
Similarly with one poor chap left brain-damaged by a car accident in the Xmas vacation. After he’d left hospital and his sickbed academics gave up summer research time to see whether they could tutor him back to a useful intellectual level. It didn’t work but none of the academics seemed to regret their decision to try. Hell’s bells, he might have been one of their own sons, and ditto the two schizophrenics. I still shiver when I remember these cases.
“marginalised groups (be it race …” To be marginalised by race in Cambridge you’d have to come from some group that’s unusually rare in British academia – Uyghurs or Hunter-Gatherers perhaps.
‘Shining a Light’
And I have the utmost sympathy for the families of those involved. But as Dearieme points out, there are cases where it is outside the capability of the institution to assist.
The only groups marginalized on racial grounds in the DEI era in current Cambridge would be white men – quite literally.
Also both Varsity and the Cambridge University Student Union are very, very far to the Left of North Korea (many would consider Murphy to be too right wing!!). Indeed it’s been rumoured that the The Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) – the North Korean Foreign intelligence service – has stopped looking for recruits in the university as the students are considered too extreme even for them.
@ Van_Patten
You really must do some digging before making unsubstantiated assertions. These issues are widespread at Cambridge, often covered up by NDAs: I suspect that details of what was said at the viva and the condition in which the academic staff showed up for the viva assessment, is also subject to an NDA.
As long as we are quick to judge, without doing appropriate due diligence, rampant abuses such as this persists, at the cost of our country’s most vulnerable.
I cannot comment on Dearieme points, as they are unintelligible and illegal – given that, in principle, it advocates for illegal actions.
Given that Dearieme has had a number of decades direct experience of things on the ground, as it were, then perhaps you should pay attention?
Shining Path
Will revert back shortly once I am back home.
@ Tim Worstall, and you made that deduction from exactly what?
His assertion that: “If disabled students keep topping themselves stop admitting them until you’ve worked out the cause(s) and decided on rational courses of action”.
Complete and utter farce of a post by Dearieme: very much doubt that Dearieme is in academia also, given the quality of Dearieme’s english and poor attempt at a straw man’s argument.
I do hope that Jacob Meagher’s matter prove’s successful at Court, and is not simply settled over an NDA; given that change is very much needed at the University.
All the best with this thread, I believe I’ve expressed as much as I can here.
My deduction? I know who Dearieme is and at least some part of his working career. Which included, among other things, pastoral care for students at a globally top university (not revealing which one simply because if Dme wishes to use a pseudonym then who am I to provide enoughh detail to possibly identify him?)
From an article in 2022 on the BBC:
According to the most recent data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), published in May, the suicide rate for higher education students in the academic year ending 2020 in England and Wales was three deaths per 100,000 students, the lowest rate in four years.
Between 2016-17 and 2019-20, students also had a significantly lower suicide rate compared with the general population of similar ages.
There’s always going to be outliers. Tragic as is every individual case, it’s very hard to prove that here we have a case to abolish elitism, or neoliberalism, or ban just having the normal opinion that Great Britain and Northern Ireland should be run for the benefit of its legal residents.
Shining Path
No less than 6 students committed suicide at the University of Cambridge (in the space of months in 2022) – all of which were students from marginalised groups (be it race or disability): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-65311284
Not sure they’re all from marginalised groups based on that, I’d hazard COVID Lockdowns were a major cause and am guessing you backed such measures.
The University has been condemned by its Student Union for failure to safeguard its students: https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/24028
The CUSU always finds something to complain about – bit like saying ‘Pope is catholic’. It was utterly Stalinist in my day and I preceded Woke by about 15 years.
It has been widely reported that the University has failed it’s disabled students:
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/25862
https://www.varsity.co.uk/comment/24328
The BBC is a deeply unreliable news source. Varsity is less reliable than the KCNA (North Korean News Agency) – it always was. Saying they prove anything falls at the first hurdle. It is like using Der Sturmer to condemn Jews, seriously.
An external body has written a very critical report about the the University’s Examination Access and Mitigation Committee (EAMC), the body that handles the University’s reasonable adjustments applications for disabled students (legally required reasonable adjustments): SUMS Consulting: Review of the university’s approach to examination and assessment adjustments, allowances and mitigation: Final Report October 2023
For what I can see of SUMS again looks like a think tank that is hired to come to a foregone conclusion. I should know as my brother runs such an organization. Again I can’t treat them as a credible source.
I would suggest that the general population would do a bit a digging before coming to any conclusion; being prestigious does not make the University infallible.
I’m certainly not claiming that but I would advise you to check the sources of what you’re posting and think that they may have an agenda before treating them as holy writ.
“ How on earth do you “find something new” in law?
“Supreme Courts” seem to be quite good at it, when it suits them.”
Human rights, they can make it up as they go along. Who would have thought an illegal immigrant who commits rape can’t be deported because his cat might be lonely?
Cambridge University is entirely populated by intellectual outliers. If they’re intellectual outliers they’re also almost certainly outliers in other ways, too, in a competitive pressure cooker in which no matter how stellar they were before they’re now rubbing shoulders with people unimaginably better than them, simply because they’re on that really steep upper part of the Pareto curve.
This will lead to outlier behaviour. If Cambridge (and Oxford) have higher suicide rates than other universities this should come as no surprise. The stakes are higher in every way. Sad but true.
Now I can believe the NDA bollocks because no-one wants to admit, publicise or confront this, but I’m also deeply suspicious of people who bandy about fatuous terms such as ‘marginalised groups’ in the context of the most privileged, elite and pressured academy in the country.
And let’s face it, this lad isn’t going to cut it as a barrister, is he? Because if he was, having qualified already he’d have kept at it rather than poncing about with a PhD. He’s a grifter.
If Cambridge is to some degree culpable in its treatment of Jacob Meagher, it’s that it allowed a student to pursue an academic life for which he was quite clearly not suited but didn’t have the guts to say so.
The idea that an individual can evince signs of personal or emotional fragility in order to qualify for special consideration on admission and then go on to claim special treatment at examination is ridiculous especially where the field in which they later seek to gain their livelihood is by nature confrontational.
If you lower the bar for certain candidates on admission it must be because those candidates show the potential for matching or surpassing the rest of their cohort, failing which they will emerge as also-rans in a race which they shouldn’t have entered. All of this is obvious.
The links posted by Shining the Light are all from ‘The Varsity’ student magazine which is, I imagine, parti pris in criticising the University’s treatment of the student body or individual students.
and can be safely ignored.
It would be no surprise to me if the majority view today among the wider population was that the major universities and their student intakes deserve one another and this is sad.
I wonder if any of those would have fared better if, instead of being told how special they are throughout their schooling, they had instead been told to man up and grow a pair.
Shining a Light criticising someone for poor English broke my irony meter.
Well done Jacob. It takes guts to stand up to any Institution.
Institutions and Employers need mandatory training on disability law, reasonable adjustments, etc. Anyone who is involved with a person with a disability needs mandatory training on the disability.
The total misunderstanding of the actual disability by Institutions, Employers and Courts, (including Judges/Justices/Magistrates), is rife in the UK and needs urgent change.