No More Final Exams At Harvard?

According to Harvard Magazine, final exams are "going the way of the dodo."

Last spring, a mere 23 percent of the school's 1,137 undergraduate courses gave exams, the magazine reports. And a new faculty vote dictates that a professor must actively decide whether or not to give a final within the first week of class -- historically, it had always been a given that a class would have a test at the end of its run.

The impetus behind exam extinction? Among other factors, professors questioned their value as assessment tools and disliked the responsibility of proctoring them.

The Harvard Crimson reported in April that professors are increasingly being prompted to consider creative final exam alternatives under the school's new curriculum, adopted in 2009.

While this development might come as welcome news for students, the National Review, for one, is not happy, and fears what is to come:

...Given Harvard's reputation as a trendsetter, we should expect better. Just imagine: Students will be delighted to forgo finals, and instructors will be thrilled not to have to create or grade them. Everybody finishes the semester earlier. (The last few weeks of class don't really count when that material won't be tested!)

What do YOU think? Should final exams be done away with? Is Harvard onto something? Weigh in below.

Comments

[PatrickforO]

02:14 AM on 07/21/2010

How then will the students demonstrate their command of the knowledge supposedly imparted by participating in the class? I mean, I can see this for something like 'social psychology,' sure, but calculus? Nope. Need a final in calc.

[jimmyac]

02:13 AM on 07/21/2010

This policy should be instituted at all levels of education. Projects and papers prove a student's ability to draw applicable knowledge from a class. Final exams disengage students and encourage cramming, as well as focusing on test taking abilities. Projects encourage critical thinking and innovation, which is needed in the working world.

[clevernamehere]

02:13 AM on 07/21/2010

Once again, the National Review makes no sense. It is very common for undergrad and grad classes to not have a final because you are turning in a 10-30 page research paper. Not having exams doesn't mean students aren't being graded.

[gthang91582]

01:00 AM on 07/21/2010

I doubt very much that Harvard will be doing away entirely with the idea of challenging their students. It's funny to think that this will make life at Harvard more easy, but I think what they're insisting here is that a standard final test that covers the cumulative work of the semester is outdated. I imagine the professors will come up with something more interesting.

[IfIonlyknew]

12:22 AM on 07/21/2010

That will make going to harvard kind of like a T Ball game,every body gets a chance and nobody fails.

[PolishPirate]

12:43 AM on 07/21/2010

Yea... Lol... T Ball... Many of us in non-science major, liberal arts programs have very few final exams (if any)... Other assessment items are not like T Ball games (i.e. rigorous final papers) and plenty of people fail...

[IfIonlyknew]

10:21 AM on 07/21/2010

No,I agree with you my comment is out of place.

[KristinNoelle]

12:00 AM on 07/21/2010

Here my issue: As much as parents would like to believe otherwise, our children are not all geniuses. At some point, competition must weed them out of the world of higher education and they must enter the adult world and get a job. The denial of this fact has accounted for the huge surge in the percentage of kids attending college despite the fact that kids today aren't really any smarter than they were 50 years ago. Don't get me wrong, education is a wonderful thing, but when every student is pushed through the system and everyone is given As, the truly outstanding students have to stay in school much longer than necessary waiting for the dummies to finally quit so they can distinguish themselves academically. It's a huge waste of time, talent, and money.

[supportamerica]

02:36 PM on 07/21/2010

You also need to read the article on plagiarism on this site. The two kind of go hand in hand.

[KristinNoelle]

05:17 PM on 07/21/2010

Funny story. A few years back I taught a course and one of the requirements was to choose 5 topics out of about 12 and write a 2-3 page paper about each one as part of the course requirement. I didn't set any official deadlines, but recommended the students pace themselves and not turn in all 5 the last week. Well of course a few students waited until the last week and these papers were of fairly poor quality with the exception of one student.

This guy turns in 5 papers on the last day, all of which were much longer than the required 2-3 pages, and all were extremely well-written. I was a bit skeptical due to his otherwise mediocre performance in the class so I typed a few lines of one of the papers into google and the whole thing was an editorial cut and pasted from the Wall Street Journal. All five papers were 100% plagarized. He literally did not alter a single word, he just found some articles and stuck his name at the top.

When I called him on it I was amazed to discover that this was my fault because I didn't specify on the assignment sheet that the students had to actually write the papers themselves. In my opinion, I was being generous my merely failing him on the papers and not the whole course. I still laugh about that one from time to time.

[veritas88]

02:53 PM on 07/20/2010

This is an excellent idea. too much emphasis is placed on final exams (about 60%) which creates an environment in which students strive to cram info for tests instead of truly learning material. I think grades should be based more on classroom projects/ presentations, papers and in-class participation. These methods actually promote learning in a natural and enjoyable way (and students can't easily cut class all semester and then show up for the exams). I think that's also why at Yale Medical School, there is the Yale system in which there are no exams beyond the required nation-wide USMLE or COMLEX.

[janmarlene]

07:25 PM on 07/20/2010

Exams are an effective study tool that should be used in conjunction with other assessments to determine whether students have grasped the course concepts. Harvard must be finding out what other colleges have discovered across the country: students are not learning the materials in courses for a variety of reasons. Harvard does not l like to fail students (wealthy parents become upset and stop donating $ to Harvard), and they are trying to break away from their infamous inflated grades. So, the option they are using is simply to pass as many students as possible on the pretense that tests do not test (oh, really?) and, gosh, instructors don't like being bothered with having to administer and grade them. Students happy, Mom and Dad happy, Harvard happy. Money talks.

[KristinNoelle]

11:47 PM on 07/20/2010

I have to agree with you on that. There are ways to write test questions that are unlikely to be answered correctly by crammers. Plus you can't really assign papers in subjects like math.

[harvardkid15]

11:59 PM on 07/20/2010

You're all missing the point. You can still have an exam for subjects like math and science where exams are a part. As a harvard student, not every class needs a final. Nor is a final really a great indicator. The so called grade inflation everyone thinks exists actually doesn't. Not when you have50 to 70% of your grade tied to a final exam. Find a new way to test things. Have a project for an engineering class where they go out and build and design something. How about create a business model? What about writing a paper for history? Use your math numbers in application. There are a number of ways to demonstrate you understand. Testing notoriously shows who's a good test taker, not who knows the most info. Put someone in the field to have to apply what they know, and that shows who really mastered the material.

All this nonsense about keeping rich kids happy is silly. You do realize that Harvard has probably the best financial aid package to help poor, bright students reach their goals right? And that that financial aid package comes from the donations of the wealthy? So before you begin to think about how every little rich boy does fine, wait a minute and think about the policy.

[KristinNoelle]

12:02 AM on 07/21/2010

There are VERY few classes that put that much weight on the final. At my school (and this was back in the 90's) there was a university-wide policy that limited the weight of any single exam to 40% of the grade.

[harvardkid15]

12:10 AM on 07/21/2010

I'm there to tell you that's not the case. As a gov concentrator, I can't tell you a Gov Class I've had that hasn't had AT LEAST 40% of my grade determined by the final exam. It's easier to tell you of classes where the exam was not at least 40% than it is to tell you which ones are over that amount.

I've got no problems with exams themselves. Or the weight of the exam. It's simply that not every class needs a final exam. For me, it is much more important to write policy papers than it is for me to take an exam.

Nor does this new policy absolve Harvard Students from taking midterm exams. Remember, all of this is simply an option to go toward a new policy of education where tests are not the end all of a student's educational experience. You don't take tests in the work force. You are judged on your performance by how well you can take your skills to get a task done. What's wrong with simply starting that process earlier in college?

[aphextwin07]

02:44 PM on 07/20/2010

while i don't agree that final exams should be removed at all levels in college, it would seem to make sense during the senior or last year to have some sort of alternative grading method in place in lieu of finals.

[Odeemgawa]

01:53 PM on 07/20/2010

I've been a teacher for 30 years. Exams are useless. How often in life does a person have to take an exam to keep their job? Strictly 19th century baggage.

[veritas88]

02:55 PM on 07/20/2010

i agree with you. i'm currently suffering through studying for the MCAT and i'm wondering why i need to know physics or general chemistry not natural to the context of medicine, to go to medical school.

[KristinNoelle]

11:52 PM on 07/20/2010

You need to know it because there are 3-4 times as many med school applications as there are openings. Students who can't maintain a firm grasp on fundamental scientific concepts tend to not do so well in med school and hence, spots shouldn't be wasted on them. If you are the type of person that takes a biology class and forgets everything within a year, you will not do well in med school and shouldn't waste your time.

[KristinNoelle]

12:03 AM on 07/21/2010

Um...let's see, EVERY job that requires a certification and/or license requires ongoing testing to keep one's job. There goes that theory.

[poindexter]

10:12 AM on 07/20/2010

Lame

[Alexia Parks]

09:21 AM on 07/20/2010

Here's a grading system I heard about and love. At the beginning of the school year, the teacher announces that ALL students are going to get an "A" in the class. Then asks them to write a paper telling what they are going to do to deserve it. With few exceptions, they act like, and "become" A-students.

[murphthesurf3]

07:58 AM on 07/20/2010

In Japan high school students labor mightily to get into a university, and then they glide. Getting in is what it is all about especially in non-technical fields.

THAT IS WHERE HARVARD AND MANY OTHER SCHOOLS HAVE BEEN HEADING FOR YEARS.

Students do like Comprehensive/Cumulative/Rigorous Finals. Professors do not like creating them, preparing students for them, proctoring them and grading them. Department Chairs and Deans do not like the grade protests that arise from them.

AND YET, those like myself who taught in the world of university learning for many years will attest that students in the college environment are at the best in the first three weeks of classes and in the last four weeks.

So much of college life is about "other learning" in a way high school is not. That learning is informal, social, experimental, and often puts the academic side of things far, far to the side.

If a professor is honest, he/she will admit that texts are read, reserve materials are perused, and study groups have energy when there are clear goals.

In an age when professor evaluations determine how many students sign up for classes and how many sign up affects one's productivity ratings, professors fear that finals will leave students with a bad taste in their mouths.

In 30 years in the college classroom, I gave carefully designed finals nearly 300 times and a lot of the very best learning in each of those semesters happened then.

[incandescently]

12:07 PM on 07/20/2010

Where did you get the idea that students actually like Comprehensive/Cumulative/Rigorous Finals? Speaking as a college student I dread cumulative finals! I find them ineffective. Many students will cram all the information into their head the night before and then forget it. Final exams are not the best way to truly test a student on the knowledge they've accumulated that semester.

Many of my professors have gotten rid of the Final Exam and replaced it with a final paper, which I find infinitely more efficient. I am able to spend as much time as I need to express my thoughts in an organized manner and truly delve into the material. I cannot do this in two hours in a blue book. Learning shouldn't be about memorizing facts, but rather about exploring ideas and analyzing them.

Where the heck did you get the idea that students actually LIKE finals? You obviously haven't gone into a library or study hall the week of finals or been near the dorms when people yell and scream at midnight to let loose their frustration.

[bruinlover09]

06:10 PM on 07/20/2010

I agree. I love my classes required a final paper over final exam. I felt that I was able to demonstrate my mastery of the class better with a final paper. There are no time limits with final paper, only deadlines.

[Canajax]

04:00 AM on 07/20/2010

Harvard is selective enough during admissions that I think students working at that level deserve to be afforded more academic latitude than at most schools. Final exams serve as a benchmarking aid that really isn't all that necessary for them.

[democritus]

02:52 AM on 07/20/2010

Often you put more work into a final paper than into a final exam. To write about something in depth takes some actual understanding. The essays on a final exam are usually too brief to show what you know--all you have to know is enough to write a few short essays. And the multiple-choice type exams are a real joke.

[KristinNoelle]

12:05 AM on 07/21/2010

I do like papers, but you can't really write a paper about intro chem or calculus.

[bleeplander]

02:19 AM on 07/20/2010

I think the name will soon be called Hahahahahahahaha Harvard.