Student performance informs pass mark

Hi Geraldine, yes this is the minimum cost that I'm adding up here. It will cost most people a lot more for the reasons you describe. I don't necessarily have a problem with paying a lot for a valuable hard-to-get qualification. However the value of this qualification is being diminished by the IFoA's own actions in trading their qualification at a massive discount for continental European 'fully qualified' + 1 year work experience. Plus all the other things highlighted on this forum that I and others have such a problem with and are not being listened to by either the IFoA or their supposed supervisory authority the FRC.

 

I totally agree - big discrepancy in cost and qualification effort (and yet we would have the same credentials essentially)

I also think the institute is particularly bad at addressing students' concerns - and by "bad" I mean slow / non-responsive / dismissive / deflecting / non-disclosing. At least that's the impression they've left me with. And I remember once sending an email to the lady that writes for the student section of The Actuary magazine because she'd actually written in her column once to get in touch with her. I got no response at all, and it took me a long time to construct my email in a thoughtful, fact-based, well-structured way. There's just no champion for change or for really taking the concerns of students seriously and communicating their efforts on these matters. And we're the ones funding the Institute - a shame. I'd never recommend anyone to go down this actuarial route - maybe there's more joy with the SOA? Sadly, I think it's too late for me to consider this (and too expensive with having to pay for all the exemptions too)

 

Geraldine, I've experienced exactly the same from them for years and years. There is no justification for them behaving in this way. From what I've experienced in terms of how student complaints are dealt with and many other things; the common theme is dismissal, a lack of transparency on all fronts and zero humility to admit problems on their side.

They oddly provide anonymity and confidentiality for some and not others e.g. if a formal complaint is made about a Fellow, the Fellow gets to see the full complaint but the complainant doesn't get to see their response/defence at all and can only hear the decision reached but not the full details. So the accused could come up with all kinds of lies to defend themselves and distort the picture, including smears against the complainant, safe in the knowledge the complainant would never find out or get to challenge it! Imagine if courts had this kind of 'standard', it clearly would not be acceptable.

Then there's odd things like a member being allowed to refuse the IFoA releasing their exam pass history. Well I don't see why anyone deserves that 'right' to conceal and I can think of only one reason why someone would want to... yet at the same time people who actually pass these exams get their names printed publicly online for exams going back to 2010, which means younger/newer members can have their exam passes checked out by searching those pass list pdfs, but they won't release historic pass lists to 2000 in an archive so that older members can be checked out similarly... I could go on and on.

The point I'm making is that this lack of transparency, a problem identified by the Morris review a decade ago which they're supposed to be addressing, is still there. In the examples above, I don't believe the secrecy granted is appropriate and is only of use to those with dishonest intentions.

 

That's quite rude of her not to respond at all, not even an acknowledgement? Then why ask for people to get in touch?

I've submitted several article ideas to various editors of this magazine over the years. Like you, initially I had no response at all, even after sending my ideas to several different email addresses of editors, sub editors etc. of this magazine. When I did get a response it would be like "it's not on our list of topics, you write it (for free) then we'll look at it... (then we'll decide it doesn't fit our agenda and reject its publication)".