University of Virginia Library

Charles Ribakoff

Fourth Year Comps
Found Unfair, Unneeded

The squalid expressions on the faces of
most fourth-year men are returning to
normal, the faculty is looking somewhat less
harassed, and the sales volume of Monarch
notes in Corner Bookstores is returning to
normal; the medieval torture misnamed
Comprehensive Examinations is over once
again.

Hopefully, they will not pass away
forever, taking their well-earned place
alongside the voluminous writings of
Socrates for their contributions to education
in the twentieth century.

Socrates, you will remember, never
wrote anything. And comps are an awful
bore, some unneeded hassle, unfair, a waste
of everyone's time, and most of the other
things they have been recently accused of.
But this has rarely been a sufficient reason
to discontinue anything at this institution
and they are not the major reasons why
comps should be discontinued. They should
be discontinued simply because what they
prove, if anything, is highly dubious, and
what they accomplish is even more so.

In the days when comprehensives were
less a subject of ridicule, a college education
was a most rare thing, effecting something
less than one per cent of the population.
Comps date back to the days of the old
liberal arts education, with a myriad of
requirements, regulations, and restrictions,
that they gradually found their way into
well-deserved obscurity.

A college education was, in this
context, far more comprehensive in nature
than today's survey and lecture-based
system. Further, the subject that one
majored in was expected to be what one
spent the rest of his life doing. Therefore,
the Comprehensive was an effective tool for
tying things together, and making sure that
a student had a somewhat complete
knowledge of his major field.

But the world has changed, while
someone wasn't looking. Education is a
whole different thing now than it was 50
years ago. It is more widely available, less
concentrated and centralized, and more
necessary. With the bulk of one's education
presently obtained in lecture rooms with
several hundred bored students, and few
classes smaller than 35, it is now almost
impossible to learn anything comprehensively
anyway.

Further, the concept of major has been
greatly and thankfully diluted; what one
majors in often has little relevance to one's
future vocation. A bachelor's degree today
is not by any means exclusive; a master's
degree is almost required to do anything
above the level of selling insurance, and it
helps even for that.

Even so, the education system, as it has
gotten more liberal, has gotten far more
broad based. As a result, an undergraduate
education has become for many an exploratory
experience prior to more intensive
study (if not simply a fun place to wait for
Greetings from the President.) So few learn
anything of a comprehensive nature.

Comprehensive examinations are thus
testing a knowledge of their major field at
the end of four years - it is no longer a
valid thing to expect from a liberal arts
education.

In light of these changes in education, a
general thesis or independent research
project makes a good deal more sense than a
3 or 4 hour examination designed to test
things that are no longer relevant. Comprehensives,
in the context of their historical
importance, are today useless.

This is not a great secret; the futility of it
all is one reason that comps have become
such a joke in many departments here. Last
year, two students who didn't take their
examinations were passed by one department;
this year a C student got a high pass
by studying only a Monarch Notes outline
for a couple of days before his comps.

In one department this year the
examiner failed to show up; in another,
comprehensives were a series of take home
essays that often had no relevance to what
the student had been studying. For another
department, the examination was all multiple
choice. What these examinations prove
in this form and in this system is somewhat
dubious.

And the idea of someone doing sufficient
work for 4 years to graduate and then not
being able to because he failed an exam that
had no relevance to what he had been
studying is somewhere on the extreme side
of ridiculous.

The abolishment of comps is long
overdue. I can't think of anyone who will
miss them.