How can 80% of students in a class fail a particular paper?

[Anonymous]

I'm a postgraduate student doing my masters in literature. Recently our results came out and we saw 80% of the students have failed a particular paper. It was subjective and many of them said they attempted all the compulsory questions and wrote good answers.

A small amount of students passed that paper, including me. In fact my marks in it, though not satisfactory, is far ahead of pass mark. I've also topped my university. My classmates who've failed however are making it seem like there's some mistake and I've been wrongly overestimated. I feel extremely uncomfortable and guilty.

Can anyone here tell me under what circumstances the majority of students may fail in a paper that seeks subjective answers? Thank you.

Updates

+1 y

*marks in it, though not satisfactory, are far ahead of pass mark.

[LiamJHayden]

" It was subjective"

Like in "Back to School" where Rodney Dangerfield failed on a paper on Kurt Vonnegut that he hired Vonnegut to write for him, subjectivity can yield weird results.

[Asker]

Thanks for the answer, and I appreciate your viewpoint. However, we're mostly asked questions from literary texts, such as novels or poems and do critical work on them.

One thing I know is that those who have failed, almost all of them wrote their answer on the basis of the notes they received from a tutor. Also, a huge portion of them did cheats. So, it's not possible that they wrote anything other than what the tutor gave them. The tutor is a college professor too.

[Asker]

A few of us didn't take tuitions and made our notes by ourselves. Only those people have passed.

[OlderAndWiser]

80% of the students can fail when 80% of the students are stupid.

[Adam1978]

Yes all students can fail a test if they all suck at it.