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Harvard Makes an Eye-Popping Change
http://channels.isp.netscape.com ^ | 8262010 | CSM?

Posted on 08/26/2010 4:04:46 PM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK

Harvard Makes an Eye-Popping Change

Harvard students will no longer take final examinations. In fact, if a Harvard professor wants to give a final to a specific class, that prof actually has to notify the university he or she will be giving a final exam!

The Christian Science Monitor reports this is a huge change. In the not-so-distant past, Harvard professors who opted to skip the final were required to obtain approval from the university. Some are jumping on the Ivy League school, decrying the policy.

"Harvard is yielding to education's most primitive temptation: lowering standards and waiving measurements for the sake of convenience," wrote Chester Finn and Micky Muldoon, both Harvard graduates, in a widely circulated article for National Review Online.

Some insist that a no-final policy is actually a step forward in education, since doing well on such tests is usually a matter of just memorizing facts--most of which are promptly forgotten when the final is over.

"By discouraging exams, then, Harvard is hardly forsaking academic rigor. Instead, it's clearing the way for a more engaging, challenging and truly educative college experience," writes Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, in The Christian Science Monitor.

Instead of final exams, Zimmerman encourages professors to give writing assignments that require students to master factual knowledge and apply that to form an educated opinion and analysis.


TOPICS: Books/Literature; History; Reference
KEYWORDS: harvard
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To: VictoryGal
... a play camp for overprivileged youth and trust babies.

Sums it up best. Thank you.

21 posted on 08/26/2010 5:50:28 PM PDT by Salman
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To: ATOMIC_PUNK

Harvard students.....will come out without the ability at living life to it’s fullest...HA...how dumb


22 posted on 08/26/2010 5:52:15 PM PDT by shield (A wise man's heart is at his RIGHT hand;but a fool's heart at his LEFT. Ecc 10:2)
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To: AdmSmith; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; bigheadfred; blueyon; Convert from ECUSA; dervish; ...
Harvard students will no longer take final examinations. In fact, if a Harvard professor wants to give a final to a specific class, that prof actually has to notify the university he or she will be giving a final exam!
In fact, why not just mail out the transcripts a suitable interval after enrollment, and save on payroll? Thanks ATOMIC_PUNK.
23 posted on 08/26/2010 6:47:00 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Democratic Underground... matters are worse, as their latest fund drive has come up short...)
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To: ATOMIC_PUNK

IOW, in ten years, you may as well wipe your a$$ with a Harvard diploma.

They’ll be shoveling out Baracks and Moochelles by the wheel barrel.


24 posted on 08/26/2010 6:52:14 PM PDT by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon))
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To: ATOMIC_PUNK

Thomas Sowell wrote a great indictment of what’s wrong with higher education in one of his recent books (sorry, I forget offhand which one it was...). He ~really~ tore into the “Ivy league” and other sorts of prestigious schools, even including his very own Stanford in the indictment.

Basically, according to Sowell, these schools are trading entirely on reputation and have for many years been delivering a low quality product. He said that there are “lesser” state schools, private colleges, and even online colleges that actually deliver a far better education. He specifically called out Phoenix University as being perhaps one of the best colleges in the country, even though it is almost entirely online.


25 posted on 08/26/2010 7:09:03 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: ATOMIC_PUNK
It's Harvard-trained economists that told us Obama's plan was so smart.

I'd say their standards went to the dogs somewhere between the time Bush graduated and Obama entered.

26 posted on 08/26/2010 7:54:05 PM PDT by cookcounty ("I can see November from my house!" ---Sarah Palin)
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