When I sat down for my rabbinic ordination exams in 1976, they were oral. They were administered over two sessions. The first one lasted four hours, the second one three hours.
It is true that before I could become eligible for these exams, I had to demonstrate a certain level of knowledge in written exams. It doesn’t matter. Had I cheated on written exams before the oral finals, I would have failed them.
Two years of extraordinarily intensive and specialized study reached their culmination in seven hours of oral exams. It was intense. It was extremely uplifting. It was also an extremely effective way of testing what I knew. I had to be prepared to answer, then to explain, then to counter objections or to draw comparisons and contrasts, all on the spot. In short, to pass a seven-hour oral exam, I had to be in complete control of the material.
I am encouraged by the possible turn to oral exams in universities, even as I am discouraged by the primary motivation: widespread cheating. It is virtually impossible to cheat on an oral exam. The Wall Street Journal reports that nearly two-thirds of college students admitted to cheating before the pandemic.
Then, after the pandemic, research shows that 4% of papers turned in by students were generated almost entirely by ChatGPT.
The turn to oral exams is motivated by more than the prevention of cheating. Rote memorization won’t work for oral exams, since after a rote answer is given, a follow-up question will leave the student flummoxed. In an oral exam, one must think on one’s feet, which means that one needs to think through, not just memorize, the material.
Still, I must admit, I did a double take when reading about proposed rules for oral exams at UC San Diego’s engineering department. The exams would last between 10 and 15 minutes. What? That’s enough time to determine how well a student knows a complex topic?
Professors don’t have hours to administer an oral exam to each student, but they do have a lot more than 10 to 15 minutes. Professors I have known say that the least enjoyable part of their job is grading final exams – often setting aside days to do it. Oral exams a lot longer than 15 minutes are more than offset by the time saved in grading exams.
Another proposed rule at UC San Diego: Professors must wait eight seconds before speaking if a student pauses. When the late, esteemed Rav Nissim David Azran tested me for rabbinic ordination, if I paused for eight seconds, it would have meant that I wasn’t yet ready for the exam. That was me. Generally, can a student’s competence be measured by a precise count of the number of seconds before an answer is forthcoming?
Don’t tell that to the late Rav Ovadia Yosef, however. One could not simply sit for an ordination exam with this legendary, polymathic Talmudist, a former chief rabbi of Israel. One needed first to pass an exam with someone he trusted, and he trusted Rav Azran. Having passed his exam, I could then sit for Rav Ovadia’s oral exam, and with him, one did not have eight-tenths of a second to respond. But, as I say, not all teachers and not all students are the same. The key is the verbal articulation, be it fast or slow.
Oral exams are nothing new in the yeshiva system. Indeed, the curriculum is called the “Oral Torah.” Due to fear that it would be forgotten, the Oral Torah was written down some 1,800 years ago. But its Talmudic texts are still studied orally.
As anyone in the system or anyone who has visited a bet midrash knows, it is noisy. Its atmosphere is as far from a library’s quiet as one might imagine. Talmud learning is oral.
Argumentative. Back-and-forth. Out loud. Often, very loud. For a yeshiva student to pass an oral exam is but an extension of how the student already learns – talking (or yelling and gesticulating) it through.
Of course, to reduce one’s thoughts to writing provides an invaluable benefit. To write is to coerce a student to formulate ideas carefully.
Often enough, one thinks one understands, but upon needing to write it out, one discovers that one may not understand the material so well as one thinks. For pure learning, the oral in combination with the written is the ideal.
But for the prevention of cheating, the oral exam is superior. It is almost impossible to fake it. Still more: As the WSJ points out, so much of work in the “real world,” not to mention the job interview, is oral.
Extensive practice with oral exams will enhance workplace habits. Therefore, a turn to oral exams in universities could be a real boon for a student in the long term. Of course, papers remain very beneficial.
As for the ChatGPT-generated papers, I can’t believe that a capable professor couldn’t see through this.
Speaking of AI, if it takes off as currently predicted, the importance of oral communication will rise dramatically, since the face-to-face encounter will not be subject to the potential AI trickeries of videos and other electronic media. Oral communication may become the most trusted way that one can be certain that what one is being told is real. This may be another critical reason to adopt the oral examination as the surest way to determine what the student really knows.
The beneficiaries of reduced cheating in college extend way beyond the classroom and the student. If bureaucracies or court systems or customer service seem to fail more often than they used to, maybe this is the reason: cheating in universities leaves students not so competent as their degree suggests. If the degree will now have more integrity because of less cheating, ultimately everyone in society benefits. Falling standards may be reversed as competence rises.
A version of this article originally appeared in Intermountain Jewish News.
