Education: COMPUTER BUST

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Processors banned from exams

In the beginning was longhand, scrawled into blue books. Then came the first technological debate: Should students be allowed to type exams rather than write them out? Many professors, especially at law schools, welcomed the typewriters' greater legibility. Next those silent whizzes, pocket calculators, posed the question of whether mathematics students should be permitted to bring them to exams. Again, technology won. But last week at Harvard Law School, the technological line was finally drawn—at least for the moment. No, said the powers that be, to a request that students be allowed to use word processors and computers for taking exams.

The issue came up in January, when two first-year law students brought their home computers to use as word processors at the exams. Says Wayne Walker, 30, a former Air Force jet fighter pilot, referring to his Apple II: "It was something I had used all semester. I was comfortable with it." His classmates were not. They worried not only about the computer's faster typing and editing time but also about the machine's ability to store key information and insert prewritten paragraphs at the push of a button. John Downer, 24, maintains that his Osborne computer did not give him an edge, but admits: "It could become the 20th century equivalent of a note on the shirt cuff." Bowing to the law school's dictum, Downer will be writing his second-semester exams on a portable Smith-Corona. But he is sure the computer will be admitted eventually. Says he: "It's just a question of time."