Britain recently released a study highlighting that many of its universities have replaced traditional exams with a greater load of course work. The study found 90 to 100 percent of work in many courses is course work with most exams getting abolished in subjects across the board.

Courses that still offer rigorous exams have scaled back their significance to only 20 or 30 percent of the overall marks, giving students the chance to fail exams but still be awarded degrees. Many critics say the result of this is “dumbed-down” degrees and widespread plagiarism among students, as many now download prewritten essays from the Internet and turn them in as if the work were their own.

But the lack of exams in courses does not necessarily mean students are not retaining class information. Ultimately, this reflects a changing college classroom. One in which professors look for different methods to teach their students, rather than gauging retained knowledge purely off of exams.

Many students see this at MSU. Courses still do exist that only rely on exam grades for a student’s overall grade in the class. But many professors are including more course work, papers and other materials to get students more involved.

Exams do not prove a student has absorbed course material. Many students do a lot of studying for that one exam and then forget the information quickly after the exam has passed.

There’s no doubt professors should evaluate how a student is doing, and using exams is an acceptable way to do this. But it should not be the sole, or even primary, grade for a student in a class.

There is no doubt increasing course work could result in higher plagiarism among students. But to combat this, professors might have to change essay topics from one semester to the next to decrease the possibility of this happening. Also, using tools, such as turnitin.com, helps deter plagiarism and monitor more closely the actions of students so that cheating is not as likely.

Ultimately, professors need to figure out the best way for students to retain the most information from their classes. Some might find the best way to do that is by giving multiple exams, but many are choosing to increase course work and papers in an attempt to spur class discussion and provide students with the opportunity to leave a class more intelligent than when they entered it.

College is supposed to prepare students for the real world and provide them with skills to be competitive in the job market.

Providing students with a broader range of work in a classroom rather than relying only on exams gives them more of a chance to succeed and gain more from a course, helping to boost their educational experience.