The teachers that don't want to use them will continue to churn out students that score high and don't know how to articulate a damn thing. Which may have been the status quo anyway.
Edit: I didn't like my original post
Because of crippling anxiety.
So how do you account for that? Or autism? Or any other sort of neurological disability?
If I were a professor though, I would use a baseline for every student.
At the beginning of the semester, have an oral exam for a difficult topic that the students are expected to already know. Material from a prerequisite class would be good.
I would always give 100% for that oral exam if the student showed up. And that exam would become that student's baseline; their future oral exams would be judged based on that.
They'll probably be more nervous in front of the professor the first time than the last, so it would actually give them an advantage in later exams.
Probably still problems with that though.
But the other problem is harder to fix. I guess I could be much harsher in the first one, and go easier on the real exams later? Maybe that would reduce the number of students who do well on the first one?
Eh, I'm not a professor. Not my problem.
Btw, I was a professor and I saw students on both ends of the spectrum. Students who would bomb an oral evaluation because of anxiety but would do well in written exams. And student who would bomb written exams, but would totally ace an oral evaluation. Since, a professor's job is to create well-rounded individuals, courses should include a mix of different assessment types, so students slowly build up the skills to handle all of them. Of course, augmented by guidance and feedback on how they can build those skills.
We may see a rise of on-site homework.