One of my former colleagues (now retired), Brian Silverstone, used to share stories of the old days, when examination papers were shipped off from New Zealand to England for marking at the end of the year. The examiner would be some moderately known academic in England, who few in New Zealand would know, and who would likely never have set foot in New Zealand before.
Thankfully, such colonial practices have long since ceased. However, they have lasting effects. For example, this historical examination process explains why most New Zealand universities have graduation ceremonies in April, for students who completed their studies at the end of the previous year. That was necessary in times when the examination scripts would face an eight-week journey by boat in each direction, but it makes little sense these days, when final grades are known within days or weeks of the end of the trimester.
Anyway, not all of the examiners were relatively unknown. As Conrad Blyth (University of Auckland) noted in this 2007 article, published in the journal History of Economics Review (sorry, I don't see an ungated version online), John Maynard Keynes was the economics examiner for the University of New Zealand (as it was in those days) in 1919. Interestingly, his father John Neville Keynes had been the examiner for 1899-1903.
Blyth's article includes full copies of the six Honours and MA examination papers that the younger Keynes set for students. They make for an interesting read. It is surprising how many of the questions bear close resemblance to questions I might ask my students now, such as:
Why are lawyers better paid than coal-miners? Should they be? The answer should contain a careful analysis of all the important underlying causes...
What sort of undertakings can be suitably run by municipalities? Should they aim at making a profit? Would they ever be justified in making a loss?...
Discuss the justification and the utility of Governmental intervention to fix prices. What are the chief dangers of such action?...
What is the incidence of taxes on (a) rent, (b) profits, (c) bread, (d) alcoholic drinks (e) domestic servants?
Of course, Keynes would have been looking for a much greater depth of insight and analysis from these Honours and MA students than what I expect in my ECONS102 class. Nevertheless, the persistence of the sorts of questions that economics academics ask of students is striking, even a century later. In another sign that the more things change, the more they stay the same, this essay topic appears in Paper (f):
The Policy of New Zealand towards Immigration now and in the future.
I don't ask students to write essays, having dispensed with them after my first year of teaching. However, if I were setting an essay question today, that seems to me to be a topic that would be attractive right now.
My students generally do a good job of answering these questions (to the standard I am expecting). However, Keynes was not impressed by the quality of the students that he examined. He made the following comments in his examiner's report:
The candidates as a whole showed that they had been reasonably industrious and conscientious in their work. If, however, I may make a criticism, it would be that they are unduly tied down to their textbooks, often imperfectly understood, and show an insufficient independence of mind. There was hardly any single instance in any of the papers of an individual or characteristic remark showing the personality of the writer. There was hardly even a lively or impudent passage amongst the lot. The general impression produced on the examiner’s mind is therefore very dull...
I'm extra glad that I don't have dull students!
[HT: Thomas Scrimgeour, via Frank Scrimgeour]
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