indeed.

Two? Try “between eight and 26”. You have a mid-course exam, either at the end of the second term of first year, the start of the third term, or the end of the third term, called either “Prelims” or “Mods”; you have “Finals” at the end (duh); and you have “Collections” at the start of every term except your first term and your finals term and except any term in which it might clash with Prelims or Mods.
However, only Prelims/Mods and Finals count in terms of your degree; the rest are just to keep an eye on your progress.
And if you are studying more than one subject (say, History and Economics, or PPE - Politics, Philosophy and Economics) you have separate Mods, Prelims, Finals and Collections in each. But the minimum is eight – one every term except the first term of first year.

Grading in US universities generally takes into account homework, essays or lab projects (depending on the subject), one or two midterm exams and a final exam.

The advantage of the US system is that the student has more opportunity to demonstrate achievement in different contexts. The disadvantage is that since some of the work takes place outside the classroom, there is increased opportunity for cheating.

As I usually teach, a particular type of problem is assigned for homework (I allow this to be done in a group}, again on a midterm, and then again on the final. This means that the student has already encountered that type of problem (and seen solutions) twice before the final exam. Surely this makes things as easy for the student as could possibly be expected—but some still fail.

It seems to me that the European “one exam for everything” system requires a lot more self-discipline from the students. While I am not opposed to students having self-discipline, I teach at a working-class university where most of the students hold down jobs to finance their education, and often have family responsibilties as well. Unless they are forced to do work throughout the semester because it affects their grade, their academic work could easily slip behind because of their other responsibilities. In this sense, the American system may be perhaps more “democratic”.

I don’t know how typical this is in the US, but at my university we have “academic renewal”, which means that a student can pay the fees again, take the course again, do all the work again, and the new grade will replace the old. You can do this twice per course. After that you can still take the course over and over, but your results are averaged together. I think my record so far is that one student has taken one of my courses 5 times without passing.

P.S. While I am discussing primarily US universities, from experience I know that Canadian universities follow a generally similar policy. I can’t claim direct knowledge of any other countries.

Was my experience somehow distinctive? Have things changed?

[BTW, these were law students—they could indeed sit, and sit, and sit, which meant that they went on into their 30s holding down a bureacratic job somewhere and telling the world “I’m working on my law degree.” I suppose there was some government $$$ in the equation, too. YOu ask the prof how many students he had and he’d say—I haven’t any idea—becaus they could sit, and sit, and sit. And yammer and yammer.

The prior meaning (and the one still used by anyone outside British academia) is that numbered IV/23.a in the OED Online:

“A planned or prescribed series of actions or proceedings: as of medicine, diet, study, lectures, etc.”

Now, the UK academic bureaucracy calls such a lecture course, a “module”. I find this usage immensely confusing and refuse pointedly to use the newspeak.

Can repeat Summer exam in Autumn.
Can repeat entire year and take Summer exam again.
If degree programme divided into Pass and Honours streams (eg Arts, Science),
Autumn repeats will put you into Pass stream – must repeat year to get Honours degree.
Don’t remember if you actually had to do Autumn repeat first but people always did anyway as
there was nothing to be lost. No grants or fees paid for you if repeating the year – sometimes people were allowed to audit classes w/o fees for first semester and pay just for second semester.
.

Also I have to say that, in addition to the 9 official exams I had one extra informal (but allowed) exam session so I must be crazy or something.

The really horrible part of examining in Italy is that students can refuse to accept a grade. Thus they bargain with the implicit threat that if you don’t give them a slightly higher grade, they will make you read the nonsense they write the next exam session.

Still, all in all, it beats working.

Don’t most of us Yanks have at least two exams per course—a midterm and a final? (There have even been some instances when I’ve given—eek—three exams.)