<p>I predict a 75% surge in applications and a 99.7% matriculation rate. (With its grade deflation, and good old finals, Princeton is thoroughly scrod.)</p>
<p>Harvard</a> Wimps Out on Testing - Chester E. Finn Jr. & Mickey Muldoon - National Review Online</p>
<p>wait… it doesn’t say anything about midterms though does it?</p>
<p>Niceeeeeee</p>
<p>Finals are a cramfest. Assigning 40% or more of your final grade to what you produce in two or three hours’ time is a bad idea, especially since some people have four finals in two days and some people have two finals in two weeks. I approve.</p>
<p>And no part of this says that there will be “no more final exams at Harvard.” It just won’t be a requirement. Like a third of my classes so far already didn’t have finals.</p>
<p>Well, let’s face it, it has been a LONG time since Harvard was associated with RIGOR in undergraduate education.</p>
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<p>I love tired stereotypes.</p>
<p>Seriously, it’s obvious why no Harvard undergrads accomplish anything later in life.</p>
<p>^I know, it’s the sad fact of life…</p>
<p>notamushroom -</p>
<p>what do you expect from a Yalie</p>
<p>much ado about nothing - (this is a scheduling and calendar issue) </p>
<p>and the OP knows it - (else he wouldn’t be hiring Harvard undergrads)</p>
<p>I hope opting in isn’t too much of a fuss for the professors, because I do like the experience of a final! If I have lots of classes without them I will be sad. 
Although a final paper (or to a lesser degree, final presentation) are okay too. Final assessments engage the brain and everything kicks into gear and then I know if I learned what I needed to (brain-machinery goes click click chick click poof! final result that looks like I understood things), or if I didn’t (brain-machinery goes click click whizzz burrrr fnang… final result that I can tell I didn’t), and then my grade is kind of irrelevant. Even if I would’ve understood everything after preparing for and completing a final, the chaotic bits and pieces of my knowledge just won’t cohere without some sort of rigorous final assessment. And if I end up with a half-finished clockwork mechanism that has coagulated out of my knowledge, rather than a functioning clock, I’d rather have that than a mass of aimless parts. Four AP Exams in 5 days? 3 in 2 days? Awesome! Wooooooo…but I like tests and essays and presentations (UChicago summer school presentation = fun fun fun, I could have written a dissertation on that!) more than most people. I am starting to feel abnormal. >> More so than usual.</p>
<p>@DwightEisenhower, maybe I will feel differently at Harvard.</p>
<p>Hey Banjo…Harvard graduates accomplish a lot in later life, IMO. Look at Ben Bernanke, the founder of Facebook, etc.</p>
<p>^ When I first read this, I thought you were placing “the founder of Facebook” in apposition to “Ben Bernanke.”
Would have been gold.</p>
<p>Of course final exams are up to the discretion of the individual professor.</p>
<p>Is he or she going to give a “final exam” for a writing-intensive humanities course? Short answer exam on minute details to test who actually did the reading and how much of it, eh?</p>
<p>I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s an extra form for professors to fill out. Nothing has changed in terms of deciding whether a particular course will have a final exam, paper, project, or some combination of the above: it’s the professor’s choice.</p>
<p>Personally I dislike final exams that make up a large portion of your grade, because I’ve always found that they force me to memorize large amounts of information in a short period of time, regurgitate it over a three-hour period, and then promptly forget 90% of it once the exam is over. I can work on a final paper or project at my own pace, as long as I meet the deadline, which is more like the way projects and academic papers work in the real world.</p>
<p>I disagree, behavioral economics teaches us that even small administrative obstacles can bend results substantially in the context of populations. In Europe, something like 80% of the population is registered to donate organs in the event of death, versus something like 25% of Americans. Why, because Europeans are more altruistic than Americans? No, it’s just that in Europe you are automatically registered as a willing donor when you get your license renewed – you have to submit paperwork to opt out of the system. Relatively few people bother. Conversely, in most US states, you have to opt in to the donor system, and again, few people bother. Likewise, any HR officer will tell you that if employees are automatically registered for a benefit such as a retirement savings plan, participation rates will be much higher, than if they have to go through even the slightest of bureacratic inconveniences such as checking a box and signing a form. Seems weird, but it’s true. If this article is reliable, then that’s exactly what the Harvard administration intends – psychologically, to make finals the exception rather than the rule.</p>
<p>Why are final exams such a particular administrative bother at Harvard? Its peer institutions seem to deal with them just fine.</p>
<p>And I absolutely disagree on a pedagogical level. Though a stressful process, for most courses, the act of reviewing and synthesizing material is extremely important, perhaps the most important part of the course. As much as I hated finals myself, I do remember a sort of excitement as disparate elements of a course would suddently fall into place and the light bulb would go off.</p>
<p>Look at an Oxbridge education, which I do not have but generally admire quite a bit. Three years of coursework tend to be but a preamble to a week or two of comprehensive exams in your field. You end up truly a master of your field, a shrewd analyst, and a vigorous proponent of your views.</p>
<p>This move by Harvard pushes undergraduate education another step in the direction of being a loosie-goosie collection of random courses with little accountability at the end where every student will get superlative grades and, most will get “special honors” at graduation. </p>
<p>Though I am not associated with Princeton in any way, you do have to applaud its efforts to ensure that graduating with one of the fairest degrees in the land does actually reflect some sort of sustained academic rigor.</p>
<p>i agree with mancune. i have learned the same from social psychology.</p>
<p>Harvard professors are not average people who flinch at the sight of bureaucracy. I don’t believe this rule will change anything.</p>
<p>I was being more than a little sarcastic when I posted the note about Harvard grads. I’m a rising sophomore who knows quite a few incredibly accomplished former Harvard undergrads, and I was trying to lampoon (so to speak) the declarations about the lack of educational rigor at Harvard.</p>