Cambridge University may scrap handwritten exams over bad handwriting

The UK's prestigious Cambridge University is mulling scrapping an over 800-year-old practice of handwritten exams in favour of using laptops or iPads due to the deterioration in students' handwriting.

A growing reliance on laptops has led to students' writing becoming increasingly illegible, academics said.

The move would see an end to more than 800 years of tradition after students increasingly chose to use laptops to take down lecture notes.

Cambridge University has now launched a consultation on the topic as part of its "digital education strategy", having already piloted an exam typing scheme in the History and Classics faculties earlier this year, The Telegraph reported.

Dr Sarah Pearsall, a senior lecturer at Cambridge's History Faculty who was involved with the pilot earlier this year, said that handwriting is becoming a "lost art" among the current generation of students.

"Fifteen or twenty years ago students routinely have written by hand several hours a day -- but now they write virtually nothing by hand except exams," she told the daily.
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