Secondly, the number of exams, the question selection, the grading, and the appeals procedures, etc., which we have put in place to ensure fairness and robustness of the results, have significantly increased the work for the faculty. In our survey, we found that each faculty is spending about 12-13 hours on each comp. At least some faculty feel strongly that this cost is not justified by the benefits. A third problem appears to be continued lack of understanding among students what the main purpose of the comp is. Concerns are also expressed about the seriousness of the synthesis goal of the comp.
Students feel, and some faculty agree, that the questions are increasingly of the final exam type.
From the faculty viewpoint, it seems very difficult to write questions which are fair, and at the same time adequately test synthesis skills. If we decide to continue the comp in its current form, the committee feels that we should at least make the exact goals of the comp very clear and explicit, and follow them strictly. Change the comp so that it can be passed in stages. The main purpose of this option is to make it possible for students to focus on different areas of the comp each time. Two different ways of implementing this were considered.