Oxford University extends time for maths and computer science exams in bid to help women get better grades

Article here. Excerpt:

'Oxford University has extended time for maths and computer science exams in a bid to help women get better grades.

Undergraduates were given 105 minutes to complete their papers, rather 90.

There was no change in difficulty or the length of questions and female students were said to do better as a result.

Dons trialed the changes to allow women to achieve higher results, with just seven female maths finalists achieving firsts last year compared with 45 men.

The proposals were put forward to reduce the 'undue effects of time pressure' which the prestigious university believe effects women more than men, reports the Sunday Times.

However, critics have slammed the changes as 'sexist' as they believe it suggests that women are the weaker sex.'

Like0 Dislike0

Comments

giving a person more time (to a point) makes for a better product. we had this 'time vs. grade on tests' discussion when I was an undergrad. i'm retired now and have worked in many diff environments and had many, many diff job titles. I won't say that time can't be a factor, but never have I seen a situation where everybody involved didn't prefer an eng. taking a bit of extra time to make sure all his/her calc's/plans were error free.

my answer to my prof who wanted everything done very fast was 'do you want a good, accurate engineer, or a fast engineer?' I don't think he appreciated my input sometimes.

otoh, schools are already bending over backwards to accommodate certain groups. the problem is that once parity is reached, the affirmative action type benefits don't stop. an example of this is title ix. the ruling is that even though parity has long since been achieved, the number of female athletes will still reflect the makeup of the university, thereby adding to the imbalance, and of course needlessly destroying many men's sports teams. I believe this is now being reflected in the falling number of u.s. men's Olympic medals. doubt any so called 'investigative journalists' will dare cover this though. just a theory of mine as I have seen nothing on it, as expected. maybe i'm wrong but i'm not wrong about the damage title ix causing to men's sports, contrary to its original purpose.

Like0 Dislike0

. . . are they planning on increasing the time allotted for students to write final essays in English classes in order to help the males? Yeah, right. . .

Like0 Dislike0