The worst thing about this system is that there's not usually any chance to retake the exam. As far as I can see, there's no good reason for this, and all it does is heap pressure on students while providing a worse overall assessment of their ability.
Don't most UK universities let undergraduate students resit exams they've failed, within reason?
And a degree consists of a good number of courses, each of which will have its own exams - so if you do poorly in one or two exams, there are plenty of chances to bring your average back up.
> Don't most UK universities let undergraduate students resit exams they've failed, within reason?
I've attended 3. Two of them made students retake the entire year if they needed to resit an exam. The other one based students' entire grade on one set of final exams at the end of the 3 years and had no provision for resits at all.
I believe the first two are typical in the UK.
> And a degree consists of a good number of courses, each of which will have its own exams - so if you do poorly in one or two exams, there are plenty of chances to bring your average back up
That's true, but it's also true that a more lenient system would be more compassionate (student mental health is a huge topic for universities) whilst simultaneously being a better measure of student's true abilities.
> there's not usually any chance to retake the exam
Of course there is. One of my classmates milked this system to remain a student for about twice as long as the rest of us. He was good at manipulating the bureaucracy, not so good at physics; probably should have studied law or some sort of social science instead.
If you look at it another way, it's like a lifetime warranty. You can't trust an appliance vendor to provide quality, but you can trust that if they have a warranty they will meet the conditions where it will make financial sense to have one.
Having such an exam adds enormous extraneous pressure that does not reflect the reality of conducting research, but it is this pressure that guarantees (with some exceptions) that the student has been coerced into learning the material to a sufficient standard. There will always be the cramming psychopath who grabs a first after just a week of study and who retains nothing of it, but most students just have to learn intensely over the course of a year to pass through the filter. In some ways, this is also why it's common in the UK for employers to not care so much about the specific degree, just that you have one with good grades from a reputable institution.
> There will always be the cramming psychopath who grabs a first after just a week of study and who retains nothing of it, but most students just have to learn intensely over the course of a year to pass through the filter.
My concern is for the students who study intensely, learn as much as anyone else, but don't pass the filter. Universities in other European countries allow single units to be retaken without retaking an entire year, and it seems to me that this provides a fairer system without devaluing the qualification in any way.
