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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?
If only they had 200 more undergraduate-level courses.
It's worth noting that it says "three-hour exams," and nothing else. There are other courses that could have other kinds of finals -- for example, engineering courses with comprehensive final projects or liberal arts courses with final papers/presentations and the like. In some ways, it makes more sense for students to work on a final project that utilizes the skills they're supposed to have learned in real-world situations -- especially for engineers.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Can't say it's good or bad, but these kids will miss out on the cathartic drunken debauchery on the weekend following the finals.
Kids these days... buncha pussies.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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.
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
Easy, one is good at doing work and the other will be their manager. I'll let you figure out who is who.
Harvard graduates something like 96% of its incoming students. MIT graduates something like 94%. The students entering institutions like that already know more than the graduates of lesser schools.
Whatever Harvard does will be just fine ... for Harvard. My school, where I have 100 students in a class and I get about 5 minutes to evaluate each student, will keep final exams because that's all we have time to do. OK, so I exaggerate a bit but it really does come down to economics. How much time do you have to work with and evaluate each student? If you don't have much time, you have to use exams.
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.
I just started my first week of gradschool, where 90% of the people in my program, and a large percentage throughout the university are asian. We had to sit through an orientation seminar on plagiarism, which seemed to be directed specifically at international students; there was a large emphasis on cultural differences on IP, and how in America we cite our sources. I suppose if they are brought up in a society where no one owns any ideas, blatantly copying entire works doesn't seem like a wrong thing to do.
"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/
Anyone who tells you there's grade inflation at Harvard is lying. Put the best students from all of the world in a university, where most work their asses off, all of whom have fantastic educations prior to arriving, and these students are going to get good grades. There's not a single student at Harvard who got an A or an A- (they don't give out A+'s) who didn't deserve it. Granted, it's hard to get a C grade, but that's to be expected considering how fucking amazing these students are. Compare a student who has an "A" average from Harvard to a student who has an "A" average from a state school. They are both probably great students, but which one do you think is better? (Achieving a 4.0 from Harvard is almost unheard-of) How about comparing "B" students? Do you think a B student from Harvard is worse than a B student at another institution. I doubt it. And the "remedial course" you're talking about is probably Expos 10. It's not a remedial course, though most students test out of it. There aren't any other courses one can test out of (there may be department-by-department policies), besides a language, but a first-year language course is hardly "remedial". Honestly, I have no idea what that article you quoted is talking about. That student you quoted? Probably very smart but lazy, and can get by without working very hard. Good for him. Maybe he has very high standards for himself. Most Harvard students do. He was also probably bragging, in some convoluted manner. Again, most Harvard students do. Finally, your statistic on honors is out of date. Far fewer students receive honors now. I did, and I'm damned proud of it.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Anyone who tells you there's grade inflation at Harvard is lying.
Because you said so?
Harvard administrators said they are inflating grades.
Harvard professors said they are inflating grades.
Harvard students said their grades were inflated.
Various studies have demonstrated this to be true.
Besides, use some common sense: Harvard has been a highly sought after ivy league school for a few generations... are you really arguing that the class of 2007 are really that much more "fucking amazing" than the class of 1997? Yet the class of 2007 has a lot more A students than any class in the 90s.
There's not a single student at Harvard who got an A or an A- (they don't give out A+'s) who didn't deserve it. Granted, it's hard to get a C grade, but that's to be expected considering how fucking amazing these students are.
Many of our politicians - congressmen and senators are harvard alums; do they strike you as particularly erudite? Does 'fucking amazing' leap to your mind? Harvard grads trend towards success because they come often from successful families before they ever enrolled, and they often build invaluable social networks while enrolled. The education itself is certainly good quality but its nothing special, and the students aren't really all that 'fucking amazing' either.
Not because I say so, because of the arguments I laid forth in my reply.
I wonder what percentage of administrators, professors and students at other universities also speak of grade inflation. Maybe less, maybe more, but I don't see why Harvard is getting singled out. You say "various studies have demonstrated this to be true." What studies?
I actually think the Harvard classes of late are getting even better. 20-30 years ago, they weren't nearly as competitive as they are now. Where is the proof that the class of 2007 has higher grades than the classes of 1990? What about *in comparison to other schools*? This is really the point that matters, not inflation over time. It's really the exchange rate that counts.
Finally, careful who you call a Harvard alum. I am speaking only about Harvard College, not HBS or the law school. And yes, most of our congressmen and senators are pretty fucking educated, actually.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Not because I say so, because of the arguments I laid forth in my reply.
I wonder what percentage of administrators, professors and students at other universities also speak of grade inflation. Maybe less, maybe more, but I don't see why Harvard is getting singled out. You say "various studies have demonstrated this to be true." What studies?
Don't be intellectually lazy. If you just google the term, you might find the Wiki page chock full of references -- for the ADHD crowd, here's a page with lots of easy-to-understand charts
The conclusion: Grade inflation is massive, even if you try to adjust for purported quality increases by using SAT results. It happened across all private schools (with the notable exception of Princeton, who put in some radical measures to curb it in 2004) as well as most public schools. Harvard is not exceptional.