Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam
68 comments
·August 24, 2025Syzygies
One can't have an informed opinion on this without witnessing how grading a college exam takes place, first hand.
Grading a stack of blue books is a "just kill me now" brutal experience. A majority of cognitive effort is just finding the page for the next problem to grade, with finding the answer another delay; any programming language with this kind of access latency would stay a "one bus" language. So of course professors rely on disinterested grad students to help grade. They'll make one pass through the stack, getting the hang of the problem and refining the point system about twenty blue books in, but never going back.
With stapled exams one problem per page one can instead sort into piles for scores 0-6 (if you think your workplace is petty, try to imagine a sincere conversation about whether an answer is worth 14 or 15 points out of 20), and it's easy to review piles.
When I had 200 linear algebra exams to grade at once, I'd scan everything, and use my own software to mark and bin one question at a time, making review passes a pleasure. I could grade a 10 question final in one intense sitting, with far more confidence in the results than team grading ever gave me.
ipcress_file
I think problem number one is that you had 200 exams to grade.
mlpoknbji
This problem is solved by software like gradescope. Makes grading extremely fast and much more consistent (because of easy rubric adjustments on the fly). This is more concerning a STEM exam, admittedly I don't know how well this works on humanities essays.
armchairhacker
It doesn’t have to be a book, it can be a cheap laptop without internet.
mlpoknbji
The commenters lamenting this trend presumably have not given a takehome assignment to college students in recent years. The problem is huge and in class tests are basically the only way to test if students are learning. Unfortunately this doesn't solve the problem of AI assisted cheating on in-class exams, which is shockingly prevalent these days at least in STEM settings.
refulgentis
I'm curious, how is AI assistance on an in class exam even possible? I can't picture how AI changed anything from, say, post-iPhone. i.e. I expect there to be holes in security re: bathroom breaks, but even in 2006 they confiscated cell phones during exams.
I guess what I'm asking is, how did AI shift the status quo for in class exams over, say, Safari?
i_am_proteus
People bring in second phones: one to have confiscated, one to use on the exam.
A common mode I have seen is phone in lap, front-facing camera ingests an exam page hung over the edge of the desk. Student then flips the page and looks down for the answer.
wrp
Survey question: To what extent did blue book exams go away?
When I started out (and the original Van Halen was still together), blue book exams were the norm in humanities classes. I've had narrow experience with American undergrad classes the past 25 years, so I don't have a feeling for how things have evolved.
ipcress_file
I've never stopped using them, with the exception of the pandemic year, when we were forced to run online exams.
Why replace a system that generally works well with one that introduces additional potential problems?
MikeTheGreat
Same here.
Online instruction / learning can work for some people, and that's good.
I don't understand how anyone ever thought that an online exam could be made secure. There's just no way to ensure that the person who registered for the course is the one taking the exam when you don't control anything about the hardware or location, when students have a wide variety of hardware that you must support, and any attempt at remove video monitoring of the exam immediately runs into scalability and privacy issues. Like, even if you're watching a video of the person taking the online exam, how do they prove that they didn't just hook up an extra keyboard, mouse and (mirrored) monitor for person #2 to take the exam for them while they do their best to type and/or mouse in a convincing way?
It also doesn't help that you periodically get students who will try to wheedle, whinge, and weasel their way into an online exam, but then bomb the in-person exam (it's so strange and totally unrelated that they really, really wanted to take an online exam instead of in-person!).
Ok, I'll stop ranting now :)
ipcress_file
I get it. My major concern was that students were cheating online (nearly 50% if I was detecting them all) who I didn't think would have cheated in the classroom. I didn't like the idea that we were creating a situation that enticed students to cheat.
That being said, the whole experience had an impact on my generally optimistic view of human nature.
BrenBarn
I'm not sure, but I used them as recently as 2019. (Well, not a blue book per se, but a printed exam where students handwrote their answers on the provided sheets.) I'm pretty sure some faculty never stopped using them except when forced to by online classes. (Incidentally, increased pressure to offer more online classes is a worrisome combination with increased AI-aided cheating.)
jccalhoun
I was an English major and Math minor in the 90s and I used them for one class - a history general studies requirement. All the essay tests in my other classes were on letter sized paper with blank space for us to write in.
wrp
You raise a good point. I've assumed that "blue book exam" is used as a generic term for in-class tests that consist of just essays, not necessarily using the physical Blue Books that you buy at the campus bookstore.
CompoundEyes
There are schemes happening in interviews too. I've been doing many technical interviews for a senior role with off shore candidates lately. They come to me after passing a challenging online test that has controls to check for browser focus lost, opening new tabs etc. I think it may require a camera to be on too. Even with that more than half of the candidates can't code.
Our interview usually starts with them breathlessly reading from a script out of the corner of their eye. I'm ok with notes to make sure you hit some high points about yourself even in person. Nervousness shouldn't disqualify a talented person. But with the coding part I've gotten exasperated and started asking these senior candidates to share their screen and do a fizz buzz exercise live in a text editor in the first few minutes. If they struggle I politely end the interview on the 15.
One candidate cheated and it was interesting to watch. In the time I sent the message in Zoom and them sharing their screen, just a few seconds, they had either queried or LLM-ed it on their phone or another computer, had someone off screen or in the same room listening and sharing the answer on another monitor or something else. Whatever it was they turned their head slightly to the side, squinted a bit and typed the answer in Java. A few syncopated characters at a time. When asked what modulo was they didn't know and couldn't make any changes to it. It was wacky. In retrospect I think it was them reading the question out loud to an LLM.
I'm waiting for the candidate who has someone behind them with the same shirt on pretending to be their arms.
OptionOfT
> They come to me after passing a challenging online test that has controls to check for browser focus lost, opening new tabs etc.
These are the absolute worst.
You're taking people out of their comfort zone (highly customized IDE like JetBrains / VSCode / Vim) which cause them to lose shortcuts and decently working intellisense. Yes, my TypeScript in my projects is configured in such a way that I get way more information from the compiler than the standard config. After all, you're testing my ability as a software engineer, not a code monkey, right?
In this very uncomfortable place there is no way of asking questions. Yes, sometimes stuff is ambiguous. I rather have someone who asks questions vs someone who guesses and gets it right.
The testing setup is horrible too. No feedback as to what part of the tests fail, just... fail.
No debugger. No way of adding log messages. When was the last time you've been in that situation at your workplace?
All under the pressure of time, and additional stress from the person that they really NEED a new job.
Oh, and when you use compiled languages, they're way slower than say TypeScript due to the compilation phase.
And then even when your score (comprised of x passed tests and y failed tests) is of passing grade there is a manager out there looking at how many times someone tabbed outside of the window/tab?
Where am I supposed to look up stuff? Do you know all of this information by heart: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/collections/struct.BTreeMap.ht...
Which reminded me that one time I used a function recently stabilized, but the Rust version used was about 8 versions behind. With that slow compilation cycle.
/sigh.
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siliconc0w
The other side is with AI tutoring, you don't even really need exams. You have a constant real time map of where the student is strong and where they're weak.
xphos
But like you don't have that because AI will lie to you but kindly. People who are learning don't have the tools to point out those types of mistakes yet either so they will learn things the wrong way. Not to say teachers dont teach the wrong thing most of math is learning the wrong way only to later distill the right lesson but I think the automation of it is much worse
sarchertech
This is the obvious solution to chatgpt essays. You could also just add more lab sections to CS classes, and force students to do assignments with no access to AI.
When I took physics we had weekly 3.5 hour lab sections. That should be enough for most CS assignments.
SoftTalker
The lab sections were enough time to run the experiments. Writing up the lab report took additional time outside of that, at least that's how my lab sections went in school.
girvo
Yep, absolutely the case for my labs.
i_dont_know_
I feel like these kind of things push us as a society to decide what exactly the purpose of school should be.
Currently, it's been a place for acquiring skills but also a sorting mechanism for us to know who the "best" are... I think we've put too much focus on the sorting mechanism aspect, enticing many to cheat without thinking about the fact that in doing so they shortchange themselves of actual skills.
I feel like some of the language here ("securing assessments in response to AI") really feels like they're worried more about sorting than the fact that the kids won't be developing critical thinking skills if they skip that step.
Maybe we can have
viccis
The current system "sorts" the students who "developed critical thinking skills" out from the ones who didn't put in effort. If there's no expectation that they'll be sorted thus, then the vast majority won't (and right now don't) bother with developing or exercising those skills. Usually they'll just put all their effort into the one or two classes they have that actually make them demonstrate mastery of the material.
belinder
Sure school is for acquiring skills, but it's also day care. A place to keep children during the day so their parents can work, especially in a society where more and more the expectation is that both parents work.
bdowling
The article is about college-level education, which is primarily about ranking students in order of who should get the best entry-level jobs. If technology is disrupting the effectiveness of that ordering function, then something needs to change.
Merrill
There is evidence that the ranking of students in order of who should get the best entry-level jobs is done mainly by the college admissions process which bins students into more or less selective colleges.
xqcgrek2
How do blue book exams translate to real world problems the students will encounter?
Why not open book + AI use exams, because that's what students will have in their careers?
benbreen
Exactly, this is the reason why I struggle with this sort of solution to the problems we are all facing in education currently. On the surface it seems to make sense, but the blue book exam is entirely artificial and has basically no relationship to real world skills (subconsciously, even the quality of student handwriting handwriting could influence how graders assess blue books). Even leaving AI aside, anyone writing anything nowadays is using Google and Wikipedia and word processors, so why constrain those?
Oxford and Cambridge have a "tutorial" system that is a lot closer to what I would choose in an ideal world. You write an essay at home, over the course of a week, but then you have to read it to your professor, one on one, and they interrupt you as you go, asking clarifying questions, giving suggestions, etc. (This at least is how it worked for history tutorials when I was a visiting student at an Oxford college back in 2004-5 - not sure if it's still like that). It was by far the best education I ever had because you could get realtime expert feedback on your writing in an iterative process. And it is basically AI proof, because the moment they start getting quizzed on their thinking behind a sentence or claim in an essay, anyone who used ChatGPT to write it for them will be outed.
SoftTalker
It really boils down to: are universities trying to teach abstract knowledge, or are they trade schools?
If they are trade schools, yes teach React and Node using LLMs (or whatever the enabling tools of the day are) and get on with it.
jbreckmckye
Not sure how it is these days, but at Cambridge, supervisions (what Oxford calls tutorials) did not contribute to our examination / tripos scores. They were just a learning aid.
lokar
As a CS student I rather enjoyed the blue book essay exams in my classics courses.
And it did teach and evaluate skills I’ve used me entire career.
nxobject
> Even leaving AI aside, anyone writing anything nowadays is using Google and Wikipedia and word processors, so why constrain those?
And the library, and inter-library loan (in my case), and talking to a professor with a draft...
acbart
There are many subskills that you must be proficient in without tools, before you can learn more interesting skills. You need to know how to do multiplication by hand before you rely on a calculator. If you can't do multiplication with a calculator, you're not going to be able to make sense of the concepts in Algebra.
mlloyd
There are also many subskills not worth learning to some people. Sometimes traversal is what's needed and not understanding. (Though I'm never going to knock gaining more understanding)
Tools allow traversal of poorly understood, but recognized, subskills in a way that will make one effective in their job. An understanding of the entire stack of knowledge for every skill needed is an academic requirement born out of a lack of real world employment experience. For example, I don't need to know how LLMs work to use them effectively in my job or hobby.
We should stop spending so much time teaching kids crap that will ONLY satisfy tests and teachers but has a much reduced usefulness once they leave school.
noosphr
Algebra has nothing to do with long hand multiplication, people who say otherwise can't do either.
We know, because we taught computers how to do both. The first long multiplication algorithm was written for the Colossus about 10 minutes after they got it working.
The first computer algebra system that could manage variable substitution had to wait for Lisp to be invented 10 years later.
superposeur
Yes, totally. Relevant study: https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt...
petra303
I doubt they’re talking about entry level maths.
bootsmann
Why should other subjects be any different?
sdwr
Are multiplication and long division by hand really necessary skills?
I never need to "fall back" to the principles of multiplication. Multiplying by the 1s column, then the 10s, then the 100s feels more like a mental math trick (like the digits of multiples of 9 adding to 9) than a real foundational concept.
girvo
For the same reason I wasn’t allowed my extremely powerful SAT solver calculator in my maths exams (for high school and first year uni where it would’ve helped):
Because I was demonstrating that I understood the material intrinsically, not just knew how to use tools to answer it.
slipperydippery
They’re proof you learned the topic well enough to coherently write a very-few pages about it. That’s what they’re for.
Making them open book + AI would just mean you need “larger” questions to be as effective a test, so you’re adding work for the graders for basically no reason.
parpfish
most exams aren't about solving a problem, it's about demonstrating that you've learned something.
nxobject
Sadly, I think that's what's going to be lost in the switch back to exams: the ability to assess someone's ability to iteratively solve a problem or craft a thesis.
nine_k
The problem is not that a student can ask AI for answers. The problem is that the student has to have an idea what questions to ask.
For that, the student must have internalized certain concepts, ideas, connections. This is what has to be tested in a connectivity-free environment.
altairprime
Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting.
Faking intelligence with AI only works in an online-exclusive modality, and there’s a lot of real world circumstances where being able to speak, reason, and interpret on the fly without resorting to a handheld teleprompter is necessary if you want to be viewed positively. I think a lot of people are going to be enraged when they discover that dependency on AI is unattractive once AI is universally accessible. “But I benefited from that advantage! How dare they hold that against me!”
cyberax
> Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting.
Challenge accepted. One possible solution: https://github.com/RonSijm/ButtFish
altairprime
Cheaters are universal no matter what social boundaries are defined, and neither high-bandwidth wireless signals nor onboard acoustic processing can be reliably performed within the human rectum to any reasonable degree of fidelity. If one would externalize basic critical reasoning skills, I encourage finding another location to store one’s supplemental cranium :)
noosphr
>Can’t use AI on a date, or at a dinner party, or during a board meeting.
I get the same "you won't always have a calculator with you" vibes from 90s teachers chiding you to show your work when I hear people say stuff like this.
altairprime
I wouldn’t equate trigonometry, which underpins the classic parabolic example you’re referring to, with critical reasoning in human conversation. One is situationally useful at best; the other is mandatory to prevent exploitation by malicious people. Mental quadratics may be appealing, but the ability to reason is the bare minimum. Besides: if you’re using a calculator or AI in a board meeting, you’re likely unprepared for the board meeting.
bigstrat2003
You say that like those teachers were incorrect. They were correct, and still are correct. You don't always have a computer to hand, and you do in fact need to be able to do basic math.
viccis
Would you let a second grader take their spelling test using a word processor with a spell checker?
nxobject
As someone whose college papers always went through multiple drafts, I genuinely hope that the "joy" the author feels doesn't get in the way of teaching writing skills.
And, as someone who got paid minimum wage to proctor tests in college, I couldn't keep a straight face at this:
> The most cutting-edge educational technology of the future might very well be a stripped-down computer lab, located in a welcoming campus library, where students can complete assignments, by hand or on machines free of access to AI and the internet, in the presence of caring human proctors.
I think the author's leaning heavily on vibes to do the convincing here.
sarchertech
We had a math lab where you could go do your math homework and the majority of the student assistants were great. Same with the undergrad lab assistants in physics labs.
pessimizer
> I think the author's leaning heavily on vibes to do the convincing here.
I have no idea what you're trying to express in your comment, so who's using vibes?*
Were you triggered by the word "caring?" A waiter usually cares that the people they're serving have an enjoyable meal. It doesn't mean that they love them, it means that they think the work of feeding people is purposeful and honest (and theirs.)
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[*] It's certainly not in the words; I don't know what made you angry about "joy," I don't know why you think the author does not teach writing skills in "communications," I don't know why the fact that you went through multiple drafts in writing school papers is relevant or different than anyone else's experience. Maybe that's over now. Maybe I actually don't care if you use AI for your second and further drafts, if I know you can write a first draft.
nxobject
Why would you assume I was angry? (Where is your snark coming from?)
Drafting and redrafting a cumulative course paper, as well as iteratively honing a thesis, is a writing skill.
I would argue it as important than demonstrating recall and interconnection of the material. It is being lost if long-term work on papers is being replaced with 3-hour blue-book essays.
That is why I thought it was relevant. That's it.
When I was in school, some older students complained that tests were hybrid: you could handwrite or you could type. They complained that they had grown up before typing was as common and that it wasn't fair to let students type, since they could write much more. They argued for a word limit, which was denied.
Now we'll see the reverse, with students arguing that they can't handwrite effectively and need more time or whatever in order for exams to be fair. Hopefully handwritten exams will become the norm from grade school onward, so that this complaint will be rendered moot.