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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.'"
i mean if you can trust the professor without testing the student, why not trust the student directly? why make the student get out of their car?
Whats old is new again, they really should bring back the oral exam. Not only does it make for a great name for porn movies, it actually is probably the easiest way to accurately asses the students understanding of the material and prevents cheating(for the most part). Best of all, it doesn't take 3 hours per student.
Monstar L
Don't professors generally assume that you took all the time available to you and didn't procrastinate?
Yes, mod me down as 'racist'. I don't mind.
But don't do it with Asians.
I'm teaching CS in one of the universities there, and everyone loves projects to replace finals. The students copy and paste, cheat, and outsource their projects almost throughout. And when I point this out to my colleagues, sorry, they scold me for failing the students. What to expect from staff that follow Asian copy-cat culture in their own publications, and do so - and this needs to be conceded - without any bad consciousness.
If the large majority of the students is motivated, willing to learn, eager to learn, curious, inquisitive, independent, I fully agree that exams can usually be done away with. But when you have a troop of llamas who care only about a great CGPA, with minimal effort, and no desire at all to do the learning part, doing away with exams simply doesn't work.
No they don't. I live across the river from Harvard, where I regularly interact with students. Harvard is a good school with a great brand, nothing more, nothing less. If anything, the students at Harvard suffer from a very strong peer norming pressure, where they come to believe they deserve the ridiculous opportunities (without validation) that the Harvard brand affords them. The professional schools (law, business) are the worst in this respect; the graduate programs (ie, Arts & Sciences) are the most likely to produce a human being who produces in proportion to their consumption. I think it is a shame that the school is following the assumption "once you are accepted into Harvard, you are already successful by definition, and you no longer have to perform." Isn't the point of schooling to educate, not to certify? How can education work without performance feedback?
MIT is a different story. While there are clearly many opportunities and the MIT brand is also powerful, in general, the typical student at MIT is more interested in proving themselves rather than just taking advantage of the brand. Maybe my experience is limited, but by now, n > 100.
It just irks me that so many people perpetuate the myth that Harvard or MIT is some blessed land of the talented. Disclosure: my undergraduate degree was from a state university; my PhD was Ivy...I speak from experience.
As someone who has experienced the working world, I can tell you that if you're employed by someone other than yourself there's often no bonus points for efficiency, either. If you get more work done, you get assigned more work or you may actually get some extra free time between projects. In your review after a certain amount of time, you may get a raise or a promotion based in part on your efficiency. Your work defect rate being low within the assigned deadlines is far more important than getting done well ahead of deadlines, though.
If you're self-employed for contract work, you may get the same benefits for being efficient as the rapid student. If your work passes muster and you can do it faster than some other guy, you get either more free time as free time or more time to spend doing another project. You're still usually under no pressure to do the job substantially faster from the client, although sometimes that does happen because the client failed to plan ahead or their other contractor fell through. That's when you can charge and expedite fee, though. What the client wants is a workable solution within their deadline. If you can deliver early and move on to another client, that's more money, but you might prefer a break between clients sometimes. (Actually, don't deliver too early or they'll think they've overpaid. If your estimate was too long by too big a margin, hold back on delivery a bit but still deliver somewhat early.) You still have to go out and find that next client, though, so the extra time doesn't always become extra money even if you want it that way.
If you're manufacturing something, the biggest concern in efficiency is in the process. Taking a given amount of time to improve the process is fine. The manufacturer, except in rare situations, would rather you work to deadline to get a bigger efficiency gain in the manufacturing process than to get a small gain in the process well ahead of deadline. If you can easily implement a partial upgrade early and still get a bigger gain at the end of the project without a lot of extra downtime for the two separate implementations, then that might be worthwhile. In no case is a large-scale process owner going to be happy with just a 2% gain designed in two days if they gave you a month of engineering time. They'll want you to spend the rest of the month coming up with further process improvements whether you can implement them separately or not.
The only real-world situation that comes to mind in which efficiency always brings a direct monetary reward is sales. The faster you can close sales and actually collect on them, the faster you can make money. Even then, some salespeople would rather get the same amount of money in less time (after a point, of course) than more money in the same amount of time.
"Harvard University is the poster campus for academic prestige - and for grade inflation, even though some of its top officials have warned about grade creep. About 15 percent of Harvard students got a B-plus or better in 1950, according to one study. In 2007, more than half of all Harvard grades were in the A range. Harvard declined to release more current data or officially comment for this article."
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/10/05/doesnt_anybody_get_a_c_anymore/
"Plus, tough grading makes a student less likely to get into graduate school, which could make Harvard look bad in college rankings."
and also from that article this interesting bit:
"Fewer than 20% of all college students receive grades below a B-minus, according to a study released this week by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. That hardly seems justified at a time when a third of all college students arrive on campus so unprepared that they need to take at least one remedial course."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002/02/08/edtwof2.htm
Or how about a student testimonial:
"The article reported a record 91% of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. Said one student, Trevor Cox, "I've coasted on far higher grades than I deserve. It's scandalous. You can get very good grades and earn honors, without ever producing quality work."
http://www.endgradeinflation.org/
Wrong. Tech schools are just as bad or worse as the rest in terms of grade inflation. MIT and Georgia Tech are above the trend (CalTech is not listed).