Student fury over 'impossible' economics exam

Final-year students at a university in England are lipid after they took an economics exam. Students from the University of Sheffield Got together to sign a petition stating the exam questions were 'impossible' to answer. Nearly all of the 100 students who took the exam complained and signed the online petition wanting that the university to look into this. The students who wrote the petition argued that the paper was highly unfair and in some parts, unreasonable, as it required maths skills which were not taught on the module.

They went on to claim that the modules lecturer made it clear that the test would only involve simple maths. They are now worried that they will get low test scores, and that this will affect what kind of degree they get.

Prof Andy Dickerson, the head of the economics department, told BBC News not all the questions were mathematically based.

Those that had mathematical content were set at a level consistent with the maths taught to all economics students, including those on dual degrees. Professor Dickerson also said all the exam questions were on topics the students had studied.

He said: "All questions were based on topics taught in the course and for which further reading was provided." He added that one question in the exam used a term that students may not have seen before. He said this was no problem because the question explained the meaning of the term. The department added the exam would be second-marked internally and moderated by external examiners.

"All module marks are compared across modules at each level to ensure comparability.

If there are large discrepancies, adjustments are considered by the examination board.TAKING EXAMS: Rank these with your partner. Put the best advice for taking exams at the top. Change partners often and share your rankings.

sleep

make notes

drink coffee

study with a friend get up very early

take a lucky mascot

sit next to the top student

relax

The impossible question: Can you answer it?

3. Consider a country with many cities and assume there are N>0 people in each city. Output per person is N0.5 and there is a coordination cost per person of yN2. Assume that > 0 and y > 0.

a) What sort of things does the coordination cost term yN2 represent? Why does it make sense that the exponent on N is greater than 1? [10 marks]

b) Draw a graph of per-capita consumption as a function of N and derive the optimal city size N. How does it depend on the parameters of and y? Provide intuition for your answers. [10 marks]

c) Describe which combinations of and y generate a peasant economy, meaning an economy with no citiies (or 1-person cities). Why might the values of the parameters and y have changed over time? What do these changes imply in terms of the optimal city size? [10 marks]

UNIVERSITY: How useful are these university courses? Complete this table with your partner(s). Change partners often and share what you wrote.

How useful?Why?

History of Art

Music

Engineering

English literature

Computer science

Geography

Write five GOOD questions about exams / learning / university in the table. Do this in pairs. Each student must write the questions on his / her own paper.

When you have finished, interview other students. Write down their answers.

STUDENT 1

_____________ STUDENT 2

_____________ STUDENT 3

_____________

Q.1.

Q.2.

Q.3.

Q.4.

Q.5.