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Harvard Ditching Final Exams?
itwbennett writes "According to Harvard magazine, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted at its meeting on May 11 to require instructors to officially inform the Registrar 'at the first week of the term' of the intention to end a course with a formal, seated exam, 'the assumption shall be that the instructor will not be giving a three-hour final examination.' Dean of undergraduate education Jay M. Harris 'told the faculty that of 1,137 undergraduate-level courses this spring term, 259 scheduled finals — the lowest number since 2002, when 200 fewer courses were offered. For the more than 500 graduate-level courses offered, just 14 had finals, he reported.'"
Usually in classes of this sort, the grade is based on Project work and assignments that are completed.
This is in general what happens. I was a math major there, and even a couple years ago very few math classes past the freshman level had sit-down final exams. Almost all of them, though, had take-home exams which were a much more thorough test of the students' abilities and took a lot longer than three hours (usually three days or so). I think this makes more sense and is a better measure of understanding. There are issues of cheating of course, but with a well-designed exam I think this problem can be minimized.
Right, this is only formal, seated exams. My undergrad classes mostly had formal exams, but none of my grad classes did. They were all take-home exams (except for the experimental class, which had an informal oral exam). Most of them were the cruel 24-hour take-home exam.
Harvard has a variety of final course requirements. A lot of courses require final papers which take a lot more than 3 hours to write. (That includes senior theses, which take a very long time to write.) A few require oral presentations, and some require projects. Still others require passing exams during the course itself. What's been going on for years (decades?) is that Harvard would schedule classrooms and staff to support test-taking only to find that professors had other ideas (and often at the "last minute," administratively speaking). Occasionally even the students didn't get the memo, and a few stranglers might show up only to find out there's no exam. All that said, I wish Harvard would provide professors and students with more guidance on assessments. The College should try to enforce some basic standards more effectively.
Registrars are like air traffic control at universities. They keep track of where a class is being held (and make sure they don't double-book a room), who's teaching it, who's attending, what grades the students got...
When I was in school, as soon as the registrar released their schedule for final exam blocks, I e-mailed the professor to ask if this rumor the registrar was spreading was true. Many wanted to hold their finals earlier than the stated date, with the exception of the math department which wanted the last finals slot and always got it.
To me, this was critical information, I wanted to be able to tell my school break job when I'd be back in town so they could plan my work. The earlier I knew when the finals were and weren't, the better.
So, really this is a registrar reacting to a change that has already happened. Final projects have replaced the final exam in many classes, so if a professor wants to hold a memory-based final they need to alert the registrar, as that office's default assumption is changing to if they don't ask for a finals slot, they don't need it.
otherwise require you to hire an extra six entry level professors ($400,000, plus benefits = about half a million dollars) to handle the teaching load. Assuming an average class size of 30.
Instead they hire 6 grad students at about $50,000 (stipend + tuition) a year with no benefits to teach the classes. I'm fine with this of course, since it's paying for my education. I'm a TA for two 30 student sections of a 200 student course. It's introductory engineering, and I find it very rewarding, since I'm one of their first real contacts at the university. I'm only a few years older than them, and I think they can relate to me better than the stodgey old professor in the giant lecture hall.
That's less true at Harvard (and to a lesser extent MIT) than it has been in the past, if you're accepted they make a real effort to get you in at a cost you can afford and with minimal (or in Harvard's case, no) loans
From the page I linked:
I'm sure there are a handful of people who will have financial problems, but for the vast majority of students, the only impediment to attending Harvard is their academic performance.
Does anyone know the percentage of Harvard students that graduate cum laude? Magna cum laude? Summa cum laude?
(Hint: 50% graduate with these "rare" honors.)
Anyone care to guess what the average GPA is for a Harvard grad?
Why oh why did I have to go to school somewhere they didn't inflate grades? Studying makes college so much more challenging than it needs to be, apparently.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Universities, especially big-name ones like the Ivys, hate giving out low grades. So they don't. They get most of their money from tuition and alumni grants, and pumping the grades up keeps these two groups happy and paying out. This is particularly endemic at the graduate levels.
And, seriously, you need references? Is Google broken? 5 seconds:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/10/05/doesnt_anybody_get_a_c_anymore/
In 1950, 15% of students at Harvard got a B+ or higher. In 2007, >50% were A or higher.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/2/13/c-minus-prof-to-give-more-as/
"I was very delighted that I would find out what he thinks of my true performance while not hurting my transcript,"