There are moments you know you've gained acceptance by the Establishment.
I have been sent a copy of last year's Microeconomics finals paper from the University of Oxford, where we find the quite marvellous:
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SECTION A: THEORETICAL
Q 2. "Should Wikipedia be taxed or subsidised"?
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Note the complete lack of any *definitions*. Whoever set the paper clearly treats the existence of Wikipedia as a simple fact of basic knowledge, and assumes their students all have a rough idea of what it is and how it works...
On Sun, 2008-05-11 at 01:47 +0100, Andrew Gray wrote:
SECTION A: THEORETICAL
Q 2. "Should Wikipedia be taxed or subsidised"?
A 2. Wikipedia should be taxed as to do so would require new legislation allowing the taxing of foreign charitable organisation. With such legislation, we can tax all foreign charity thus making us lots of money in the short term even if it mean making us the enemy of the world in the long term.
;-)
Note the complete lack of any *definitions*. Whoever set the paper clearly treats the existence of Wikipedia as a simple fact of basic knowledge, and assumes their students all have a rough idea of what it is and how it works...
That, or the lecturer have discussed Wikipedia before during the course. To be fair, just because academia doesn't necessarily like students using (or at the least - citing) Wikipedia doesn't mean they don't recognise its existence.
Basic knowledge assumption for exams reminds me of the story of a physics final paper which assumes the student are aware of (to a reasonable estimate) the size/width/gap of [[cricket]] equipment. A poor foreign student could only answer the question after changing the sport to bowling.
KTC