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.'"

Comments

Re:one step closer to drive thru degrees

[timmarhy]

i can vouch for the truth of this. university is nothing more then elitist snobbery at it's worst, i've worked in my field for 12 years and i've never had a single graduate come into the job with even the slightest understanding of how the real world works. all of them without exception have needed training in the basics from day one.

in a rather cruel twist i'm finding that to progress my own career, i now have to go back to school and get the same piece of worthless paper that all those clueless graduates had, and i'm also seeing why they were so clueless - unless your planning on staying in academia, university really isn't setup to prepare anyone for the working world.