There is also an option outside "one exam" and "many exams" — and that's "no exams." Obviously, this is spectacularly hard to fit into the current system, but you see this a lot in vocational schools where project-based work makes up the majority of the grade and exams are held to comply with regulatory requirements.

ChatGPT might just fit into an educational world that values outcomes over fact retention. One may dream.

Well-structured exams are the single most effective teaching tool available. Assessment is a fringe benefit. I'm a strong advocate for "even more exams", where you take the highest score on particular topics.

There are variations, but if you're curious check out "Standards-based grading" or Mastery-based grading. It's in a weird and shitty limbo where a lot of primary and secondary schools have adopted it partially with inadequate training/support, and it's also getting fucked by our shitty publishing industry, same as the botched common-core rollout.

They’re saying that people that were allowed into their programs/universities because of quotas and not merit struggle to prove competency through assessment.

Wouldn't that be an issue with point in time assessment too?

How so? When you’re admitting under powered and under prepared people into a program then they will fail. Unless you dumb down the assessment and curriculum. Which universities have done to make their numbers achieve equity.

Yes but I don't quite get the difference between exams and coursework here.

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but in my view, traditional final exams tend to be a great equalizer. Continuous assessment is affected much more by personal circumstances.

For example, continuous assessment tends to force students to devote a constant amount of time throughout the course, which is fine for those who can afford to be full-time students, but disastrous for students who need to have a job to pay the bills. I have seen plenty of students like that getting frustrated because they lose points to this.

On the other hand, continuous assessment typically relies on assignments at home and these are deeply unequal and classist as well. The difficulty of these assignments depends on whether the student has someone more experienced to ask, whether they are paying for a private tutor, or whether they can plainly buy the assignment. I have known cases of students that basically bought every project and assignment that could be done at home, you know what made them sweat because it couldn't be bought? The final exam.

But almost no one cares about these things, continuous assessment is seen as the "progressive" thing to do because it's more modern and different from tradition, even if it's extremely classist and disproportionately harms working-class students.

On the other hand, it is true, as you point out, that the final exam model disadvantages students who have the bad luck of getting sick in that week. It's a real drawback, sadly. I still think it's better all things considered, for the reasons above.

Okay, totally makes sense. Thanks!

I wish people didn't have to work during studies. That's one of the biggest reasons of failing.