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It is not just age. When I mark these papers my own memories start to fade. It feels like I am losing brain mass due to the bad quality!

Really an impossible job that you do under the stringent circumstances. Somebody needs to investigate that university for malpractices. But I think that you said that you will not mark them anymore, and if you do, it can save your brain mass. !LOLZ

Haha for sure. It just gets worse and worse. I should actually record some of the bad writing and frame it. It is really bad and I cannot fathom how some people have such disrespect for themselves to even submit things like that. But it really helps with having a good laugh though.

In a way, I feel sorry for them, especially the ones that tried their best, and are waiting for top marks. Our country's education system is not up to scratch, and it looks like it will not improve soon, especially now that they are thinking about laying some teachers off. I mean, how can one teacher handle a classroom filled by 60 pupils? Sheer madness.

That is madness. (But UNISA with their 5000 students per lecturer is just as mad.) Education really became a commodity, it is a number game and not about education per se. So sad. And yes, there are probably a couple that really tried their best, but I still need to find them. From papers looking exactly the same (students giving in the same papers) to almost papers almost entirely written by AI, to papers being so sloppy and full of errors that you cannot read them, I am not so sure that there will be good papers...

Yeah, the education in this country leaves much to be desired. But the same as the universities, most schools want high passes, and everyone just gets pushed through. In your case with the same papers, I simply cannot see how you can pass that, as it's illegal, and someone needs to blow a whistle about this practice. And the same goes for papers with AI. The erroneous papers belong in the dustbin.
But you said that you have to pass all regardless. This is also illegal, and in fact it dooms the futures of the bad students, as employers will not show the same leniency.

For sure. I am not lying when I say that it is more than two-thirds that do not put any effort into writing something legible, blatant copy and paste from other sources, and AI generation that sometimes reaches up to 100% of the paper. I cannot tell you how "gatvol" I am reading the same AI-generated gibberish. I am hearing from @urban.scout that people across the country know about these practices from the universities, so even if people blow the whistle, I don't think people will care. Our field, liberal arts and philosophy and so on, is about "interpretation", so trying to mark something without a memo and then claiming that people are not correct and so on is really difficult. Something like math, with a very strict memo, is easier to show "here was wrongdoing" and so on. Very frustrating to be honest. At least I am 80% done now, but my brain is "vrot" and I still need to mark a bunch of third year philosophy papers as well..