Hello,

Full compliance with the institutional regulations concerning academic assessment may have a great bearing on all individuals involved in the given examination including learners, proctors, administrators, and other stakeholders. In general, the rules or directives issued and applied by authorities tend to increase the targeted audience awareness about the requirements of the exam. Although regulations are sometimes criticized from different quarters, they indubitably create significant benefits. For instance, all the parties engaged in the examination would know how to cope with it without being confused or lost.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Many see the advantages articulated by Riza Biria, but there is a contrary position that is held, especially in the very high prestige private schools where faculty have a lot of power and autonomy.

There are 3 objections:

First, they argue that each professor gives each of his/her courses his/her own emphases and spin. And elementary chemistry or any other subject can differ markedly from professor to professor. Therefore, the tests and examination should reflect the course that is taught.

Second, even though the content of a courses may be the same, different professors have different philosophies of the purpose of the tests and exams. Some want to stimulate further thinking; some want to measure a student's understanding of the content of the course; some want to measure whether or not the student can use what has been taught in new and novel situations; some just want to be sure that everyone who tires hard gets at least a B; and some want to push back the frontiers of knowledge. The late Serge Lange of Yale, gave as his final examination nothing that had been specifically taught in his mathematics course. Instead he give 10 of the great unsolved problems in mathematics. While that distressed many students and colleagues, the criticism ceased in a decade or so ago when one of the students actually solved one of the problems, which was one of that decades very significant breakthrough's. In those schools, where professors call the shots, the tend not to have common examinations. Of course Brown University solved the problems by having no grades at all and then the professors could do whatever they wanted. Surprisingly, graduate school admission of Brown Graduates without grades went up and not down.

The third reason is the belief that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, and no good examination could ever be done by a committee.