Fighting Fire with Fire: Scalable Oral Exams

The real problem is students and universities have collectively bought into a "customer mindset". When they do poorly, it's always the school's fault. They're "paying customers" after-all, they're (in their mind) entitled to the degree as if it is a seamless transaction. Getting in was the hardest part for most students, so now they believe they have already proven themselves and should as a matter of routine after 3-4 years be handed their degree because they exchanged some funds. Most students would gladly accept no grades if it was possible.

Unfortunately, rather than having spines, most schools have also adopted a "the customer is always right" approach, and endlessly chase graduation numbers as a goal in and of itself and are terrified of "bad reviews."

There has been lots of handwringing around AI and cheating and what solutions are possible. Mine is actually relatively simple. University and college should get really hard again (I'm aware it was a finishing school a century ago, but the grade inflation compared to just 50 years ago is insane). Across all disciplines. Students aren't "paying for a degree", they're paying to prove that they can learn, and the only way to really prove that is to make it hard as hell and to make them care about learning in order to get to the degree - to earn it. Otherwise, as we've seen, the value of the degree becomes suspect leading to the university to become suspect as a whole.

Schools are terrified of this, but they have to start failing students and committing to it.

Reminder: This professor's school costs $90k a year, with over $200k total cost to get an MBA. If that tuition isn't going down because the professor cut corners to do an oral exam of ~35 students for literally less than a dollar each, then this is nothing more than a professor valuing getting to slack off higher than they value your education.

>And here is the delicious part: you can give the whole setup to the students and let them prepare for the exam by practicing it multiple times. Unlike traditional exams, where leaked questions are a disaster, here the questions are generated fresh each time. The more you practice, the better you get. That is... actually how learning is supposed to work.

No, students are supposed to learn the material and have an exam that fairly evaluates this. Anyone who has spent time on those old terrible online physics coursework sites like Mastering Physics understands that grinding away practicing exams doesn't improve your understanding of the material; it just improves your ability to pass the arbitrary evaluation criteria. It's the same with practicing leetcode before interviews. Doing yet another dynamic programming practice problem doesn't really make you a better SWE.

Minmaxing grades and other external rewards is how we got to the place we're at now. Please stop enshittifying education further.

You've piqued my interest!

Perhaps we as humans should stop making choices which cause pain.

Why do you make choices that cause pain in yourself and others?