School of Economics delays exam due to printing error before presenting students with an unanswerable question

Over the course of Saturday to Monday, the University of Edinburgh's School of Economics managed to achieve a remarkable hat trick of incompetencies.

On Saturday morning, third years sitting a midterm multiple choice exam endured a 15 minute delay due to the wrong exam paper being provided. This came after a printing error that missed out the letters corresponding to different answer options.

The offending exam paper itself

Whilst the correct papers were eventually provided, this was not the end of the issues. Only two questions into the paper, students were faced with a question for which all of the multiple choice options were incorrect. This was only revealed several days after the exam, when marks were released.

One student commented: "I began going through the options and eliminating those I thought were wrong, but soon realised I'd ruled out all five.

"I spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure out the answer – the exam was only 90 minutes long and I had to guess the last question as I ran out of time. Each correct answer is an extra six per cent, so it can make a big difference."

The problems surrounding the exam that marred the weekend were followed up on Monday by the release of incorrect marks for a group project on which students had been working for over a month.

Marks were provided on Learn, but upon attending feedback sessions some groups were informed that this was not in fact their mark.

The school did not however immediately clarify the situation, leaving some groups unsure whether their mark was set to change.

A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: “A typo appeared on one multiple-choice question in a recent Economics examination paper. Grades were released to students the following day with this question withdrawn, to make sure no student was negatively affected.

“When marks were released for a separate third-year project, four groups of students were given a lower mark than they should have. This was corrected within 24 hours.”