Law academics at Oxford and Cambridge are to launch a national mediation service to solve clashes between students and staff. The new service will bring forward cases to discuss academic judgments, such as whether students have been unfairly denied the correct class of degree. A paper by The Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (Oxcheps), headed by New College fellow and bursar David Palfreyman, said that the new service would save a university years of senior administrators’ time and heavy legal costs as well as “[providing] a route to a win-win solution in which the institution and the student or member of staff can save face.” Until now, Lord Chancellors, Lord Presidents and bishops have all been called in for serious disputes at UK Universities but have more recently been hesitant in becoming involved in ‘alien’ academic quarrels. Oxcheps has complied a list of university legal cases and is putting together a group of mediators from university administration and professors specialising in education law. The first independent adjudicator is shortly to be announced by Universities UK, the vice-chancellors’ organisation.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003
