Source: Getty

Car-dinal: one submission spoke of cars fitted with ¡®Catholic converters¡¯

If Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown is looking for a new sinister Vatican plot for his next novel, he need look no further than this year¡¯s Times Higher Education exam howlers competition.

¡°In future all cars [will] be fitted with Catholic converters¡±, wrote one student at the University of Ulster in a paper on vehicle emissions.

That submission came from John Milliken, lecturer in education, who was also amused by another student¡¯s claim that ¡°the [hole in the] ozone layer was caused by arseholes¡±.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

¡°He probably meant aerosols, but then¡­maybe not,¡± said Dr Milliken, one of the many academics who relayed the funniest student bloopers from this summer¡¯s marking season.

One topical malapropism was entered by Verity Brack, information technology programme director at the University of Sheffield, after a student wrote that Google was ¡°one of the two main suppositories of data in the world¡±.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Meanwhile, Josephine Kelly, a lecturer in business and government at Aston University, was intrigued to read that the coalition government had a ¡°toff stance on tax avoidance¡±. On second glance, ¡°toff¡± was actually ¡°tuff¡± (tough), she noted ¨C but maybe the former was more accurate.

There was also a new interpretation of London¡¯s thriving social scene in the 18th century in a paper on the creation of the Spectator publication in 1711. ¡°Within these coffeehouses, men from all different parts of the world could interfere with each other¡±, wrote a student in a paper marked by Andrew Rudd, lecturer in English literature at the University of Exeter.

Modern history was equally troublesome for a first year at the University of Southampton. According to Suzanne Reimer, senior lecturer in geography, the student observed that ¡°globalisation has led to a growing interconnectedness between small-scale people and larger-scale cities across the globe¡± ¨C probably a welcome benefit for those under 5ft tall.

But some entries fell into the simply ¡°bizarre¡± category.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Britta Osthaus, senior lecturer in psychology at Canterbury Christ Church University, who teaches a course on the mental capacities of animals, was surprised to read that ¡°octopuses are intelligent because they have been found to be able to predict the winners of football matches during the World Cup¡±, a reference to Paul the Octopus, the cephalopod that ¡°predicted¡± results in the 2010 tournament.

And no exam howlers competition would be complete without a Second World War clanger. Alix Green, lecturer in history at the University of Hertfordshire, was baffled to hear that ¡°Hitler¡¯s role in the Second World War is often overlooked¡±.

The winning entry will be announced in next week¡¯s THE.

jack.grove@tsleducation.com