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Comment by deepsun | Hacker News Reader

I've heard that's how studying is done in Oxford/Cambridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system

That's also how it's done in almost all French engineering schools. You get open book tests with a small amount of relatively difficult questions and you have 3-4 hours to complete.

In some of the CS tests, coding by hand sucks a bit but to be honest, they're ok with pseudo code as long as you show you understand the concepts.

The European mind cannot comprehend take-home exams.

I don’t recall take home exams being at all common undergrad in the US. Open book or one page formula sheets more so.

There is no European mind when it comes to education, hell, there is barely a national mind for those countries with federated education systems (e.g. Germany).

in France I got a bunch of equivalent take-home tests, between high school and graduate level, mostly in math and science. The teacher would give us exercice equivalent to what we'd get in our exams and we'd have one week to complete it (sometimes in pairs) and it'd be graded as part of that semester

Well take home exams are not very useful nowadays with AI. And yeah, other commenters are right when he says there's no European mind when it comes to education, each country does its own thing.

Certainly with maths you’re marked almost totally on written exams, but even if that weren’t true you’re also required to go over example sheets (hard homework questions that don’t form part of the final mark) with a tutor in two-student sessions so it’d be completely obvious if you were relying on AI.

I really like oral exams on top of regular exams. The teacher can ask questions and dive into specific areas - it'll be obvious who is just using LLMs to answer the questions vs those who use LLMs to tutor them.

Of course, the reasons they do quizes is to optimize the process (need less tutors/examiners), and to remove bias (any tutor holds biases one way or the other).

In italy there's an oral in most exams. In math exams you're asked proofs of theorems (that were part of the course).

The tutorial system is just for teaching, not grading. It does keep students honest with themselves about their progress when they’re personally put on the spot once a week in front of one or two of their peers.

The biggest contrast for me between Oxbridge and another red brick was the Oxbridge tutors aren't shy of saying "You've not done the homework, go away and stop wasting my time", whereas the red brick approach was to pick you up and carry you over the finishing line (at least until the hour was up).

Yes, my undergrad degree grade was determined solely by my performance on 8 three-hour exams at the end of the final year.

Funnily enough, the best use of AI in education is to serve as exactly this kind of tutor. This is the future of education.

The promise of the expansion of this kind of tutorial teaching to everyone via AI is great. The problem is keeping students honest with themselves.

At the end of the day you can't force people to learn if they don't want to.

As a society we need to be okay with failing people who deserve to fail and not drag people across the finish line at the expense of diluting the degrees of everyone else who actually put in effort.

I only partially agree with "you can't force people". I think that all people are just like children, but bigger. You can force a kid to not eat to much sugar, even when they want to.

Same with education, for example you can financially force people to learn, say, computer science instead of liberal arts. Even when they don't like it. It's harder, less efficient, but possible.

I'm not sure why we care about the degree. Employers care about the degree, but they aren't paying for my education.

The students who want to learn, will learn. For the students who just want the paper so they can apply for jobs, we ought to give them their diploma on the first day of class, so they can stop wasting everybody's time.

Then employers will stop caring about the degree...

Employers want the degree because it's supposed to verify that you have a certain set of knowledge and/or skills, or at the very least, you're capable of thought to the extent required to get that degree. That's the only reason they want it.

Student being unable to unwilling to learn that knowledge or acquire those skills should mean they don't get that degree, they don't get those jobs, and they go work in fast food or a warehouse.

"Just give them the degree" is quite literally the worst possible solution to the problem.

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