I taught several times a course in history of math. About half the students were math majors and many of the rest were in the Arts Faculty. I announced at the beginning that students had a choice of a paper or a final exam and that the latter would be heavy on math. I expected that most of the artsies would do the paper and most of the math majors would do the exam, but I was wrong on both counts. About half the students did the paper, but they cut across that line.
I enjoyed reading the papers. Nowadays I would assume they were just copied off the net and I probably wouldn’t do that. I did have one case of plagiarism. The student, a math or science major, copied all the illustrations from a Scientific American article. He lightly rewrote the text. He would have been in the clear (although maybe with a poor mark) had he cited the article. He also included three of the four references from the SciAm article; he omitted the reference that was by the same author as the article. Unfortunately for him, I subscribe to SciAm and had read the article (on Japanese Temple problems: Sangaku - Wikipedia).
I have taught a good 10 or so classes (adjunct-level) and never offered a final exam. I normally have an exam on the last day that is weighted equally to the other exams. Many of these classes were in the summer where the university does not schedule a longer period for a final exam so that option is closed, but even so I prefer 3+ shorter exams to a midterm and final. And I think that the students do, too. These are all science and/or math based courses. The university has not set any requirements on this as far as I know.
I have had a single paper due towards the end of the course but I would never have it due on the final day. I’m not grading that shit last minute.
Grad school for me never had a final exam to my knowledge. Maybe the initial quantitative class, if anything. But in my program an A was assumed as you aren’t doing it for the GPA by that point. Undergrad memory is hazy but there was a some proportion of both.
At the university where I work (which is pretty mainstream), at the undergrad level the classes seem to be roughly:
1/3 of the courses have a final exam
1/3 of the courses have a final paper. which is usually a traditional research paper but in some departments might be more of a project depending what the subject is (for example, a stats course might have more of an analysis project, or a film course would have a final film project)
1/3 of the courses have neither a final nor a paper, but something else appropriate to the coursework
If we’re not counting papers, none of my undergrad classes had final exams nor any other exams. There were a couple occasional “quizzes” in first semester Ancient Greek, but they were self-scored and the professor often didn’t even look at how we did. But it’s kind of a strange school. There’s a math test everyone has to pass by the end of their third semester, but that’s the only exam at the institution.
I had very few comprehensive final exams in college. Nearly all of my finals were routine tests on the last chapters that we studied.
I thought that was because of the wide scope of a college course? Western Civilization I covers a thousand years of history in 12 weeks. A comprehensive final would be impractical.
I just finished a four year degree at a local college that advertised itself as having no final exams. You know, I learned a lot more from no exams than the other way. I had to really study the material to get a large paper out of it, rather than just memorizing the things needed to fill out the exam paper in three hours or whatever. Even the math classes, there was a lot of homework, and as long as I did all of the homework, I was learning.
I came to the conclusion that there is no reason for exams. In real life, most of the time, unless you are working in an ER, it is rarely so urgent you can’t stop to check up on something or look it up to make sure you have it right.
I don’t think I had a single class for my MPA that included a final exam. They were all based on written work. Many semester projects/papers but no sit-down exams.
My daughter is now in college and there have been several of her classes that didn’t include a formal final. These have included Acting, Sign Language 1 & 2, Archaeology, Humanities 101 and various art classes. Most of these have replaced the final exam with some final project.