“For me the biggest mystery is that Tony Abbott is a Rhodes scholar,” said Germaine Greer on Q&A a few weeks ago, to roars of approval from the crowd and the anger of right-wing columnists.

Greer went on to describe Abbott as “extremely stupid”. This is pushing it a bit far, but his degree transcript – revealed by the Australian website Junkee – certainly indicates he was no intellectual star at Oxford.

His marks seem to show he gained a solid 2:2, known to students of his era (he graduated in 1983) as a “Desmond”. By contrast, David Cameron – who along with many other future politicians also did PPE (politics, philosophy and economics) – gained a first. Bill Clinton, perhaps the most famous Rhodes scholar of all, never completed his degree there.

The paper shows Abbott had to take eight exams for his finals – two in philosophy and six in politics. Abbott already had an economics degree from Sydney University so was exempt from that part of the course.

His exam papers have been graded by Oxford’s time-honoured system based on the Greek alphabet. To get a first, you need some alphas (maybe two or more). Abbott hasn’t any. In fact the mark on his first paper, general philosophy from Descartes to present day, starts with the dreaded gamma – in other words, a third.

It will come as a surprise to few observers of the Australian political scene that Abbott’s strong suit was not philosophy. He gets a very low second for his moral and political philosophy exam, but good 2:1s for his political institutions, theory of politics and politics of developing countries papers.

He’s back in the danger zone with his paper on communist government in the USSR and eastern Europe and gets a high 2:2 for foundations of modern social and political thought. Overall, it does seem like a disappointing mark for a Rhodes scholar, who are meant to be the crème de la crème. Not that it held Abbott back.