Exam Requirements Waived for PhD Candidate Due to Exam Anxiety

I think in very special circumstances a student could be waived from exams. (Like if this person is some kind of genius). Otherwise, no. Anxiety disorders are no excuse. It cheapens the value of a degree. If you can’t perform, get off the professional stage. Nobody wants a doctor or a lawyer or a chemists who flips out because they can’t handle anxiety. Take up knitting or yoga instead. (Sorry, but why would someone with social anxiety put themselves in the position of becoming a professor? )They have to perform socially in order to teach? And yes, profs get evaluated all the time.

I think people that suffer from exam anxieties should be bumped to the front of the line and be made jet pilots for the Liberal / NDP / Greens electoral campaign, that would be very inclusive and accepting. No need for exams when you’re trying to fix the race.

Possibly he’d make a heck of a firefighter too, there could be a special 911 like number, perhaps like Obama’s B+ he graded himself with, so that we’d get all the affirmative action heros to come put our home fires out when we were feeling all inclusive and such…

Exams should be voluntary; students who enjoy being made to jump through hoops with a tick-tocking clock can do that. Those of us who are human can be given written assignments with deadlines, rather than being forced to go through a process designed to produce attrition.

I knew all kinds of kids when I was in school who were absolutely terrified of writing exams. Guess what? They wrote them and for the most part, they passed and moved on. Not everyone can have a PhD in Mathematics – it was one of my dreams actually, but although I probably had the smarts, I didn’t have conviction to do it. Maybe I could sue Queen’s University based on my lack of conviction?

another name for exam anxiety – inability to cope under pressure. Simply put, the person is incapable of functioning in a high stress work environment. In other words, if that PhD is for something other than a soft science the individual has no right to claim title to it. If I were a personnel officer I’d also make a point of shredding any resume’s that hi-light the University as part of the educational back ground just to be safe.

And I have “late night poly-trauma” anxiety. Guess they’ll have to call someone else for those 2 AM disasters that keep one scrambling for seven hours in the middle of the night.

I’ve often had extreme anxiety when filing my taxes … especially when realizing that some of them are going, in a roundabout way, to pay for tuition.

Note to HR Dept.

In the future, any applicant with a PhD from the University of Manitoba will be automatically rejected.

It’s clear that there are some strong opinions on this issue. Just to bring a bit of balance to the topic, I will play Devil’s Advocate.

How does a student with an anxiety disorder differ from a student with a more obvious disability such as sight impairment? Should a student with sight impairment be denied a degree because she cannot see. Instead, accommodations are made to enable the student to achieve the degree despite her disability.

Being exempt from exams is one thing. Exempting a student with a sight disability from exams would be unfair to other students. However, it is possible to make accomodations so that the student can demonstrate her knowledge. Should the same consideration be given to students with anxiety disorders?

Hello Arlin. I suppose that if someone has a physical disability, certain concessions are made. Still, there has to be standards, and life isn’t fair. I don’t want blind police officers patroling my neighborhood, I don’t want blind firemen sent to my burning home. I don’t want a blind surgeon taking out my gallbladder. However, there are plenty of professions that a blind person could be very capable at doing.

That’s what it comes down to. Capability. If someone is so anxious that they can’t complete an exam, how can I trust their ability to be capable on the job? Capable in stressful circumstances. How can I trust that their degree isn’t some token trophy from the warm fuzzy brigade. How soon until I find myself in court for daring to enforce employee evaluations? What kind of drama queen am I inflicting upon my business or employees. (’Cause experience has shown that drama is usually part of the package that comes with this sort of person.) And good luck firing them once you’ve discovered they’re incompetent. Judging them as incompetent would require an evaluation. If this persons “disability” exempts them from evaluation, well….I’m sure the human rights people would waste no time in shaking me down.

It’s very sad to see a lot of the comments on this issue that reflect that mental or emotional disorder is still not taken seriously by the general public and seen as an excuse for “slacking”. There’s a huge difference between emotional discomfort and emotional distress, and I hope that most people never have to learn the difference first hand. For my part, I think the student must be either very determined or very good in order to persevere with an advanced degree in a demanding field under the handicap of an emotional disorder. The student is probably deserving and the critics are just splitting hairs. I’m willing to accept that exceptional circumstances are present in the case of this student that factored into the decision to award the degree. Many departments and universities don’t seem to be prepared to be that enlightened. In fact, in some places students struggling on an emotional or psychological level can be subjected to outright harassment and bullying by faculty members who “don’t believe in such things”. There continues to be a great deal of prejudice surrounding mental disorders. As for the University of Manitoba, they graduate countless students every year by the book, so why single out this university for censure on the basis of one sensationalized court challenge?

If we take a step back and think about a high school student who can’t graduate due to exam anxiety… is it fair to label that student as incapable? Does that mean the student can never hold a job? If accommodations can be made that allow the student to show knowledge, does it matter that it is not in the typical testing scenario?

Of course we want capable people in the workplace. I don’t claim to know a lot about graduate degrees in mathematics. However, I am guessing there are professions that make use of such a degree that do not involve taking comprehensive exams as part of the job description. I am not saying the university made the right or wrong decision. Just that exam performance and capability on the job are not always related.

Making light of anxiety disorders in the workplace only makes the situation worse for those who deal with these problems on a daily basis. Most people with social anxiety disorder never seek help because they are afraid to be judged. It would be very unusual that they would be creating drama.

Guest, your comments are as simplistic and as uninformed as those you accuse of the same.
Having taught for more than a decade, I will always accommodate students with genuine issues, from anxiety disorders to depression and beyond: I have a reputation at the Disabled Students Services at my institution for this. However, several years ago a student managed to claim “stress” as a disability : nevermind that the course was very technical, and the student never put in more than the minimum amount of work, never did the exercises set up by me for students with technical issues, never considered that she may have to work outside of class, and used her “disability” to gaurantee that she couldn’t be failed. This was a slap to students with real disabilities, who, in my experience, work very hard and are very focused, and are up front about what they need BEFORE it comes time to do the exam or tests. Some instructors still have biases against providing support: this case at the U of M sounds like the opposite.

Response #13, I am still not sure how your response addresses the issues raised in my post. The student in question at the U of Manitoba has the support of student advocacy and has received a professional psychological evaluation attesting to his/her extreme exam anxiety. Are you suggesting that because in your estimation, one of your own students was successful in pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, the student in this situation at the University of Manitoba has done the same? And if so, does this justify the skepticism voiced by many of these and other online postings surrounding extreme exam anxiety as a justification for not completing the comprehensive exams? Since not even the University of Manitoba has been fully forthcoming regarding the circumstances of this case, for the express reason of protecting the privacy of the student involved, my post was intended to suggest that many people are jumping to hasty and unsubstantiated conclusions about this situation, and I do not believe I am wrong in suggesting that prejudiced attitudes regarding mental disorders are playing a role in this public response.

Guest, a degree loses it’s value pretty quickly if just anyone can get one. (And let’s face it, if you don’t have to be tested like everyone else, your degree is going to look like a token.)Considering how expensive it is to attend university, especially when obtaining a phd., I’d be pissed. Don’t kid yourself, I wouldn’t be surprised if this university gets swamped with at least a hundred requests for the same exemption. To refuse can result in law suits. To allow these request makes every ones elses degree look like something from a diploma mill.

As I stated in my first comment, I could see doing this once in a blue moon, but I have a feeling that it’s going to end up being one of those politically correct issues that will end up hurting the credibility of higher learning. At the very least, a degree earned in this manner should have that omission of standard testing listed on the diploma itself. That way, the person with a mental disorder is accomadated, the value of other students diplomas are not devalued, and the employer can make an informed hiring decision.

Diploma? Sigh , Freudian slip.

For those with physical disabilities, alternate type exams are already given. For those with ADHD and dyslexia, more time can be given. So, for those with severe anxiety, there should be ways to give some alternate type of test. What concerns me, too is: Math PhDs usually become Math Professors, which means this person will be GIVING tests eventually. How will THAT go? Exams are always a part of academic life. If a PhD candidate needs to demonstrate their abilities, there must be *some* way to test that – for every student.

I have a staff who is supposed to complete the required course for her position which is a promotion. She enroled the course three times with different universities only to miss the final exam because she can’t write it. We put our foot down and told her she has to complete the course or else. She applied for this disability accommodation on the grounds of “mental instability”. She requested to write the exam for 6 hours instead of 3, split in 2 days (3 hours each day), with stretching and walking in between exam parts. But in the end, she still didn’t write the exam and has claimed disability from work as well. Was she suffering from this exam and work anxiety? Her doctor said yes and I have no problem with the doctor’s professional opinion. But obviously, she cannot do her work, she cannot learn what she needs to have proficiency of. In other words, she is not fit for the job. The right thing to do, if she has any decency left, is to quit the job and give a chance to somebody else who deserves the position. What will happen to an organization if all the staff claim this disability? How would you feel if staff at government offices are claiming this disability and not working? I am not saying that this condition is totally bogus, I am sympathetic to that. But there’s work to be done and somebody has to do it. If you’re not that person just let go, maybe it’s not meant to be. How long will you hold on to a position that you do not deserve and cannot fulfill? Be fair to your employer. Maybe you are good but it’s not on this field.

this is alot of bull. People with exam anxiety should learn how to cope like the rest of us. Just tough it out. This is ruining the worth of a degree for the rest of the students.

Pulling up an old post here but I just had to comment.

I’m a graduate student (in the Humanities) who suffers extreme anxiety before exams. I’m talking several days without sleep in the run up, difficulty breathing, throwing up and passing out type nerves. To the person who says “learn to cope like the rest of us”: maybe if I had regular exam nerves I could but until you’ve been there you can’t really understand. For me it’s the result of my childhood; there were some abuse issues and I have a fear of writing down the “wrong” answer.

BUT that said, I don’t think that just exempting a student from exams solves the issue. I usually write alone (my program have been accomodating about that) or in one or two courses earlier in my degree I did verbal examinations since it’s the exam “atmosphere” that causes the anxiety in part. I certainly expect to write my comprehensives… that’s part of the requirement for the degree.

I do not suffer from anxiety in other situations; I write well, I present confidently and I engage well with my students… after comprehensives examinations are not part of the job. So claiming that “if they can’t sit an exam they shouldn’t be a professor” may not be true. Or it may be. Circumstances vary.

All in all… if the skills can be tested in another way (ie. verbal exams) or accomodations can be made (ie. writing alone, with a scribe or with extra time)… maybe they should. If the student straight up cannot prove that, without being unsupervised (ie. with access to texts) they should not get the degree.