This might shock and amaze you, but I took many midterms and finals for my CS and EE classes using pencil and paper in the 21st century, and this was at a well-known Californian private university.

Were everybody else also doing it on pen & paper, or were you the only one?

Good question :)

Yes, all students took the test together on paper and pencil in the classroom; a digital version of the test was not available.

I just went through my files to check, and indeed the final exam for my artificial intelligence class was in-class, 2 hours, pen only (no pencil).

My point being that it's quite different if everyone does it on pen & paper. If you're the only one, it's a disadvantage to do an essay exam on paper when your competition does it on laptops, no?

? Every exam I ever took for my BS in EE was pen and paper. 2015-2020.

I still regularly use pen and paper to take notes and design things as a software engineer because in my opinion it's simply the best tool for the job.

All my CS exams in UC Berkeley were pencil and paper and I thought it was fine (preferrable to computer exams). I understand that some people doesn't like it.

I took pen and paper exams at school and university between 2007 and 2012 and it was absolutely fine

I'm sure writing a comment like this means I'm getting old, but nonetheless

I took A-levels in 1980 (entirely pen and paper) and a comp sci degree in 1983. The exams for the latter were entirely paper-based.

I went to college in this century. I could probably count on one hand the times where a test wasn't on paper.