Assuming that professor was writing complex questions that were extremely difficult, and that a partial credit for a legit close solution is the difference between passing and failing the course and having to borrow/pay many thousands more for tuition to retake the course bc that professor is out of touch and doesn’t the dire consequences of his actions, I strongly disagree.

My liberal arts STEM education (graduated 2008) was incredible. Never took a scantron. In organic chemistry mechanisms and syntheses we had questions that involved a complex synthesis of a chemical but the lab is missing the obvious and best reagent and you had to devise an alternative route on the spot. He even threw a theoretical chemical on an exam at least once. There had to be partial credit or else most of the class would have failed. And there was more than one ‘rigjt’ answer.

There is definitely partial credit in real world science. I went to dental school and it it was the opposite of undergrad and it was mostly scantron exams. It was awful. Over and over again there were instances of me and other students proposing legit correct answers based on published science that the bullheaded professor wouldn’t accept as correct in their ridiculous exam bc it wasn’t their idea of the correct answer. More than once it resulted me in having to remediate an entire course or getting a full grade lower when I was in gpa danger zone.

I don’t know what type or level of engineering course that professor in your story was teaching, but based on what you described and my extensive experience in academia, fuck that professor. You can tell who studied and gained enough of an understanding of the subject to think critically about it and who didn’t. He sounds like a lazy know it all blow hard

Assuming that professor was writing complex questions that were extremely difficult, and that a partial credit for a legit close solution is the difference between passing and failing the course and having to borrow/pay many thousands more for tuition to retake the course bc that professor is out of touch and doesn’t the dire consequences of his actions, I strongly disagree.

My liberal arts STEM education (graduated 2008) was incredible. Never took a scantron. In organic chemistry mechanisms and syntheses we had questions that involved a complex synthesis of a chemical but the lab is missing the obvious and best reagent and you had to devise an alternative route on the spot. He even threw a theoretical chemical on an exam at least once. There had to be partial credit or else most of the class would have failed. And there was more than one ‘rigjt’ answer.

There is definitely partial credit in real world science. I went to dental school and it it was the opposite of undergrad and it was mostly scantron exams. It was awful. Over and over again there were instances of me and other students proposing legit correct answers based on published science that the bullheaded professor wouldn’t accept as correct in their ridiculous exam bc it was their correct answer. More than it resulted me in having to remediate an entire course.

I don’t know what type or level of engineering course that professor in your story was teaching, but based on what you described and my extensive experience in academia, fuck that professor.