Depends, Kat: if she made marks all over the papers, they'd be degraded all right. Alternatively, "After s/he degraded the students, s/he marked their papers."

I suspect brucie may have been employing to the sense of this story:
You'll remember Idi Amin, sometime president of Uganda? he was lie a cross between George W Bush and Jack the Ripper, only African. One day a newspaper reporter asked him, "What do you propose to do about defence, General" He replied, "Don' worry about de fence, I got de man comin' in de mornin' wid de hammer and de nails!"

Now that's degrading!

Steve