There are two reasons -- amongst other reasons, no doubt -- why coursework is considered important at the University level. One reason is that essay-writing is considered to be (at least in the humanities and social sciences) an important skill that needs to be learned, as indeed it is. For that reason there will always be courses that require essay-writing.

There's nothing wrong with this, though. The problem is rather that over the last few decades, essays have been to an increasing extent formally assessed, with the marks counting a great deal towards the student's final mark. And one of the main reasons for this is that the idea has got around that a significant amount of students cannot handle the pressure of exams, and are unfairly penalised by the exam system. Exams are fascist, man.

Of course most students who claim that they're "bad at exams" -- and I've heard this numerous times -- are really just bad at the subject, and this failing is cruelly revealed by the exam. But in today's caring-and-sharing University culture, it won't do to say such things.

There is also the worry now that if we went back to the system where all assessment is by exam, and essays, although required, don't count towards the final mark, most students wouldn't bother with the essays, or wouldn't do them properly. Students these days have a mind-set of "If it doesn't count towards the final mark, I'm not doing it".

Of course, if you had this sort of attitude at Oxford, it would be noticed and it would affect your mark. But at a bog-standard former Poly where there are hundreds of students in your class and they all have that attitude, what can you do? So the feeling is that unless you make coursework count - it counts 30% at my University -- students won't do it, and they won't develop the required skills.

Posted by: Hortense Portentous at May 10, 2005 01:45 PM

Am I missing something here? Surely the point is not what system of assessment we use, but rather that we produce students who can hold their own on a world stage. I don't pretend to know what proportion of coursework should be included, but what I do know is that our educational establishments are slipping fast when compared to the best in the world.
As Blair used to say, 'what matters is what works'. But that was before the left clipped his wings. It cannot be beyond us to use an evidence-based approach to answer the question.
Time for the left to admit they were wrong, and get out of the way.

Posted by: Ricky at May 10, 2005 07:03 PM

>Am I missing something here? Surely the point is not what system of assessment we use, but rather that we produce students who can hold their own on a world stage.

The system of assessment that we use *is* a large part of whether we produce students who can hold their own on the world stage. That's why it's relevant. Too much coursework degrades the quality of education, because students cheat by getting material off the internet, or -- in high schools -- their parents or their tutors or even their teachers do the work for them.

(Plagiarism, it should be noted, has become a huge problem at Universities these days).

> It cannot be beyond us to use an evidence-based approach to answer the question.

It isn't beyond *us*, but unfortunately it is beyond much of the educational establishment, who -- under the influence of social constructivism -- distrust all talk of evidence and empiricism. This is why we need to get the state out of education. Private schools will then be free to hitch their wagon to empirically-based methods.

(But, of course, if this happened the media would then investigate like crazy any deviations from the straight and narrow, like the few schools who will go creationist, in order to propagandize the need for the state to set standards again).

Posted by: Simpkins Minor at May 11, 2005 11:04 AM