University of Edinburgh 'pushing staff to cut exams'

The Herald Scotland

6 hours ago

In the latest guidance on minimum standards for assessment in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, the section on exams states: "Reducing the number of exams limits the considerable additional academic, administrative and estates costs associated with exams, and minimises the need for alternative assessments for student with adjustments".
It's understood that behind the scenes considerably more overt pressure is being put on departments in the school, which represents more than half of the University, to move away from exams.
Read More:
However, staff have questioned the expenditure the university has on external venues for exams, and raised concerns about removing an aspect of courses which cannot be influenced by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
A concerned staff member, who has been kept anonymous to protect their position, told The Herald: "There is regular encouragement to get rid of exams.
"A lot of the subjects within our college have gotten rid of exams in the past few years, they got suspended during Covid and everything was online.
'Then, partly under encouragement from management, a lot of them just never came back and now so many have got rid of exams a lot of those still using them are being pressured to get rid of them because the university spends a lot of money renting out the EICC (Edinburgh International Conference Centre)."
The conference centre is an external venue that is used to host exams for the University of Edinburgh.
It's understood the University of Edinburgh receives a discounted rate to hire rooms at the EICC.
The Edinburgh International Conference Centre However, the cost of doing so is likely to run well into six figures.
The university hires space at the conference centre for four to five weeks in May and approximately two weeks in December to hold exams.
It's understood the rate for the university to hire the Cromdale Room in 2025 stands at £9500 + VAT per day for 2025, rising to £9700 + VAT for 2026.
For the Lennox, Lammermuir and Moffat rooms the combined costs are £13,000 + VAT per day, rising to £13,650 for 2026.
A staff member said: "We used to have all our exams on site, because we have a lot of large spaces like gymnasiums and stuff like that.
'Before the pandemic the regular exam diet had two exams, through May and December we'd have exams usually at 10am and 2pm.
'During the pandemic people were doing exams online and they were in different time zones all over world, so we did all of our exams at 1pm UK time which wouldn't be too insane for most other people.
'When they started doing exams in person again they just kept that, they only did one exam per day so we didn't have enough space and we started renting it at the Conference Centre - which seems mad to me.
'The whole enterprise is incredibly expensive, we're renting out at least three of their large rooms and possibly more than that for four or five weeks in May, two or three weeks in December.
'So because they're so expensive they're pressuring us to use fewer exams, but they also seem very reluctant to revert to the old system of just using the gymnasiums which we have – we do use them, but not very intensely – and some of the spaces we used to use locally aren't being used at all, we're just renting the Conference Centre and spending huge amount of money on it in the middle of a budget crisis.
"If you're making cuts that seems like the first thing you'd get rid of, exams themselves should be about 10,000th in your priority list."
The University said the EICC "has been used in specific circumstances as part of contingency planning to minimise any possible disruption to students".
While there are some subjects where exams are less useful than in others, and ones where students will naturally sit fewer of them, a move away from exams is raising concerns over the degrees being handed out.
The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT has made assessment by essay less reliable.
In January 2023 a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90% of them had used ChatGPT to help with homework assignments.
Read More:
A staff member said: "I sit in meetings with the same people who don't like exams and we're talking about AI and they'll say, 'it's crazy, it's obvious how much our students are using them, all the worst essays have disappeared'.
'You'll always have students who can barely write, can barely get words on a page, so you used to have this left hand tail of extremely low quality for all assignments and that has almost disappeared.
'The ability to rank students and assess them on their writing is so far below what it was five years ago before LLMs.
"Even if we don't think exams are a great way to assess they're becoming, relatively speaking, better and better over time because it's where we know the students aren't using LLMs to completely undermine the whole process.
"As universities have got bigger there's more and more bureaucracy, you have people making decisions who are not involved in teaching at all, and the people who are teaching have no way to get their voice into these decisions that are being made.
'As a result I think some people just don't realise how quickly the LLMs have taken over.
"You can see it, even in the style of writing, it's so clear but part of the problem is that it's very clear, but it's also very hard to say it absolutely, definitively and fail a student for it.
"The typical way of plagiarising was copying a student on the same course, which is just idiotic and you can easily recognise it because you have two assignments that are the same. The other way would be copying blocks of text from another source.
'So you could bring a student in, put them through a whole disciplinary process and give them zero.
'But when they use AI, you don't really know. A lot of students are only using it to basically clean up their essays, a lot of them don't speak English as a first language so they write the essay either in bad English or their native language and run it through an LLM to clean up the grammar.
'So that's bad - but it's not too bad, right? We would like them to develop writing skills but at least they're learning the subject and researching the core material.
'But some students are just doing it wholesale, and the trouble is that at the end it's really hard to tell the difference. They're both written in the style of an LLM, so I don't know if you wrote the thing in your native language and cleaned it up with AI, or if the AI just did the whole thing for you.
'Even if I suspect it's one of those things it's hard to punish them anyway, because you can't absolutely prove it. You can say 'you've used the word 'delve' about 12 times as much as a normal person', which is a big ChatGPT giveaway, but I can't say 'you used the word 'delve' a lot so I'm going to fail you'. You just can't prove it.
'When they copy blocks of text you can prove it, you can just compare the blocks of text, but you can't do that with LLMs so students basically just get away with it.
'You have a lot more students who have no idea what they're doing at all and they could pass – it's not like they're going to get a First, but they'll pass and do OK.
'The point is you can pass and do OK with almost no knowledge at all, it's a major concern for a lot of people in universities.'
A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: "Marking and assessment procedures vary across the University, reflecting the diverse range of disciplines we offer.
"Any decisions around exams and ongoing assessment take into account feedback from students and staff, the specific requirements of each programme and support needed for those who require learning adjustments.
"Colleagues can share their insights or concerns through our College and School-level committees, and the University is actively engaging with students and staff on the appropriate use of generative AI. Our published guidance reflects a commitment to upholding academic integrity, while recognising acceptable and innovative uses of new technologies.'