Nobody actually wants to **** anything up for students - none of us get into this **** to damage students and it's a bit sad that the discussion sometimes assumes that staff are somehow jumping up and down to sabotage the students we spend years trying to mould. But this is a really big issue, and the universities need to know the magnitude of it - they keep giving lip service but they haven't really got it. Sometimes these principles they claim they hold have to cost them a bit of money too, not just the rest of us. This is one of those times. I keep seeing talk of students suing the institutions - great, go for it. The more pressure at institutional level, the better. Yous should be pissed off, but be pissed off in the right direction and with a clear view of the bigger picture.
The sooner this is addressed in a satisfactory way to everybody, the better.