Catalan students have denounced that the Mathematics exam in the university entrance exam was an exercise in endurance, not knowledge. With an excessive duration and extreme complexity, the average grade has dropped to 4.1, the lowest in a decade. Students who scored an 8 in high school have obtained a 4.5, closing the doors to scientific university careers due to a poorly designed test.
The algorithm of disaster: when educational technology fails 📉
From a technical point of view, designing an exam with calibrated difficulty items is a task that requires statistical analysis and simulations. If the test has such high variance that a student with an 8 average drops to 4.5, the evaluation system loses reliability. Digital graders and calibration models should detect these mismatches. However, here the failure was human: neither the duration nor the complexity was adjusted to the real profile of the students.
The exam that needed an extension and a psychologist 😅
The test was so long that some students started solving differential equations in their dreams. With an average of 4.1, passing is now a reward for physical endurance, not mathematical knowledge. Families are demanding changes, but in the meantime, future engineers learn that in real life, sometimes the problem has no solution, only a complaint form.