Students are still at risk of exam blunders at a university where a young Scot killed himself after being wrongly told he was not eligible to graduate, a damning report has found.
A watchdog voiced ‘serious concern’ after an investigation at Glasgow University following the suicide of Ethan Scott Brown, 23, who was found dead by his mother on what should have been his graduation day in December 2024.
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) found evidence of up to seven other cases of potential marking mistakes and warned there were ‘insufficient’ safeguards to guarantee the ‘security of all award decisions’, showing a ‘systemic risk to academic standards’.
Mr Brown died three months after Glasgow University officials told him in error that he did not have the necessary credits – but a month after his death, his shattered family discovered the geography student had actually achieved a 2:1 honours degree.
Last night the family’s lawyer Aamer Anwar said: ‘This investigation triggered by Ethan’s death is a damning indictment of systemic failures at the university.
‘Ethan’s family are sickened by the gaslighting they endured as the university claimed publicly there were no systemic failures.
‘In fact, this report shows their internal report said the opposite – and there were several other instances at the geology school [where Mr Brown studied], but they had also failed to carry out any investigations into 23 other schools.
‘The university’s actions to date are shameful and it is time that they fully declared how many other students have suffered in this way.’
Ethan Scott Brown who took his own life after being wrongly told he was not eligible to graduate
Ethan Scott Brown’s mother Tracy Scott
The QAA said the university had ‘identified several cases… where errors had been made in exam board decisions, with serious consequences for the outcomes applied to the students affected’.
Officials checked more than 700 student records at the time of the QAA review, and confirmed ‘two students with mistaken outcomes, and a further five students requiring further investigation before confirmation of errors’.
But ‘no similar checks had been made in any of the other 23 schools at the institution’.
Yet the university claimed last year that it had ‘checked all its records and is confident that the error in relation to Ethan’s marks was an isolated one’.
Meanwhile, the QAA said the university had ‘outlined an institutional commitment to “compassionate communication”.’
But there was ‘limited awareness of this training’ and the QAA highlighted the ‘absence of a shared standard for compassionate communication’.
Students said that although the university strives to be compassionate, receiving formal university communications can feel ‘daunting’.
The QAA report added: ‘Furthermore, students described university correspondence as generally helpful and open, yet sometimes strong in tone.
Lawyer Aamer Anwar said Ethan Scott Brown’s family were ‘sickened by the gaslighting they endured as the university publicly there were no systemic failures’
‘Similarly, staff reported that some communications lack empathy, noting finance-related correspondence as a specific example, with the wellbeing team observing the subsequent impact on students.’
The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) has said that it will be working closely with QAA Scotland and the university to ‘ensure that the recommendations outlined in this report are implemented as a matter of urgency’.
The QAA will also now ‘conduct a national review of the assessment and associated policies and procedures across the sector’.
Vicki Stott, QAA’s chief executive, said: ‘The findings are of serious concern.
‘We are committed to working closely with the university and the SFC to ensure that the University of Glasgow implements the recommendations in this report in a timely manner so that academic standards are protected, and the quality of student experience at the university is safeguarded.
‘We look forward to completing the wider work that the SFC has announced today related to these topics, with the Scottish sector.’
A Glasgow University spokesman said: ‘Following an internal investigation into assessment regulations, the university self-referred to the SFC.
‘The university fully accepts the recommendations subsequently made by the QAA peer review and the risks it identifies.
‘Since February 2025, we have worked to address the issues highlighted in the internal investigation and will implement the recommendations of the QAA review through a comprehensive plan that builds on current change projects.’