Distinct Decline?

Can this be true? Four-year undergraduate Masters degrees in science were a different matter, as were Scottish MA Honours degrees, with both having the same classification system as a BA. But around the turn of the century, the pass mark for an English postgraduate MA was 60, or at least it was at Durham, and a distinction was presumably awarded from 70 up, although we never thought about it, and I cannot remember one. It was taken as read that you were a big boy or girl now, so you would either get your MA or you wouldn’t. You certainly either got a distinction or, in fact, you didn’t. There was no bronze medal.

Yet it has been suggested that there now existed a distinction, 70 or above, like a First; a merit, 60 or above, like a 2:1; a pass, 50 or above, like a 2:2; and a borderline pass, 50 or above, like a Third. At postgraduate level. At least there is no equivalent of a pass degree. The man who first called me “a populist, not an academic”, not that I have ever claimed to be either, went on to take a 2:2 to my 2:1 in the same year of the same BA, and then failed to be awarded the MA that I hold, the only person of whom I have ever heard to have handed in an MA and just have it failed outright. Even he, though, will not have scored as low as 39. So these days, he would have his MA. Can that be true?