An ex-Clifford Chance trainee is suing Oxford University for £1 million because its "boring" and "appallingly bad" tuition robbed him of a first class degree and a successful career in law. He may have left it 16 years too late.

38-year-old Faiz Siddiqui was awarded a 2:1 in modern history at Brasenose College in 2000, but told the High Court in London that he would have got a first if not for the "negligent" teaching of a course on Indian imperial history. His barrister, Roger Mallalieu, argued that 13 of the 15 students received their lowest mark on the course, which proved that "the standard of teaching was objectively unacceptable”.

Mallalieu criticised the tuition given by Dr David Washbrook, an expert on southern Indian history, claiming the academic suffered from “intolerable” pressure when four of the other seven course staff took sabbaticals. He noted that while "it has been said" that Washbrook "was boring", that did not form part of his client's case, because "if that in itself was a viable allegation against teachers, these courts would be full".

    Siddiqui, bored stupid 

Siddiqui is claiming a million pounds for loss of earnings, which he says would have been his if he had received a first. A top degree would have enabled him to pursue a career in international commercial law in the US, he claims, but instead his “disappointing" result caused depression and insomnia which means he has a “fundamental inability to hold down any professional day job for any significant length of time”.

Oxford University argues that the claim is baseless and should be struck out given that 16 years has passed since Siddiqui graduated. And there's the slight issue of a 2:1 being no barrier to entry to good jobs in law, as demonstrated by, er, Siddiqui, who trained at Clifford Chance. Which most law students would count as a fairly solid foundation for a legal career.

RollOnFriday understands that Siddiqui was not kept on at qualification. He may have spiked his chances when, according to lawyers on the RollOnFriday discussion board, he "once mistakenly asked a (youthful-looking) partner to scan some documents for him".


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Comments

Anonymous 09 December 16 08:49

He got a training contract at CC. Surely the responsibility for his success in life after that was up to him?

Anonymous 09 December 16 14:47

Not that it means he will win, but the Court dismissed OU's strike out application (before this post was uploaded, in fact). http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2016/3150.html&query=(Siddiqui)

Anonymous 11 December 16 23:38

Who goes to Oxford for the quality of the teaching. It's the lack of quality of the teaching that makes a degree from Oxford so valuable. It's known you had no help and did it on your own. I'm sure I'm not the only one who found the teaching awful and am grateful for it.

Anonymous 12 December 16 04:16

anonymous user
09/12/2016 12:29

Not sure the caption really needs the "bored".
++++++

True, it should read "fat".

(apols for not keeping it nice, but really...)

Anonymous 12 December 16 19:04

“Fundamental inability to hold down any professional day job for any significant length of time”?
Suddenly everyone who googles "Faiz Siddiqui" remembers that someone else applied for that job he was going for.