Serious Discussion: Why is the SOA making the credentialing process easier?

BigPeePee

I hope I don't get banned for starting this discussion, but I think this is a serious issue that needs to be discussed.

This thread is not about if the exams are easier today than they were 10 years ago. We all already know they are significantly easier. That is not up for debate.

We need to discuss why the exams are becoming easier. Who is benefiting from easier exams? How do easier exams affect current ASAs and FSAs?

CalebWetherell

Seems like a discussion worth having, no banhammer for you.

Having said that, I think it would be useful if you added some support for the claims you make.

Here's a graph from actuarial-lookup.com that shows the pass rate for Exam P going up over time.

I think study material gets better over time, so that would be one factor to consider. I don't have much of an opinion on whether the process is easier today than it used to be.

Edit: The most recent two sittings are obviously strange, to say the least.

BigPeePee

CalebWetherell

I think study material gets better over time, so that would be one factor to consider.

Sorry, I don't buy that explanation. The Bar exam and the CFA exams both have gotten better study materials (The guy who owns CoachingActuaries also owns a similar site for CFA exams), yet passrates have remained consistent for more than a decade.
I think people are overestimating the impact that study materials have. It may push certain people who were on the edge to a pass, but they're not going to cause a huge 10-15+% gain in passrates.

CalebWetherell

BigPeePee they're not going to cause a huge 10-15+% gain in passrates

I definitely agree with this point, especially a sudden change like we see with the last two exam P sittings. My comment was more about trying to explain the slow upward trend of the red line, not the sudden jump the last two sittings.

ncrowder

That's truly bizarre for sure. I was in the July sitting and also thought it was unusually easy compared to the study materials. Was it some kind of strange exception to the norms based on COVID impacts?

BigPeePee

ncrowder

Which exam did you take?

BigPeePee

Also, it seems that there are fewer and fewer people taking exams each sitting, so I'm not worried about saturation. I do worry that my credentials will be devalued.

ncrowder

BigPeePee I took exam P and am doing exam FM in December. I felt like I might have gotten 28 or more correct. There was a lot of repetition of easier concepts (discrete bayes' rule for example) and the harder concepts were mostly missing from the exam. I think there was only one question about moment or probability generating functions, for example. I also worry a little about the devaluation thing, but surely things will go back into more a status quo state after COVID.

BigPeePee

CalebWetherell

When I was doing problems in ASM, I've noticed that the older problems were more indirect and less straightforward, whereas modern problems are just memorize and regurgitate.

The one metric that has remained steady over the past 13 years has been # of passes. My suspicion is that the SOA is aiming for a hard number of passes. Exam takers have been declining slowly with the exception of COVID. To keep the number of passes steady, they had to lower the difficulty overtime.
For COVID, they predicted far fewer exam-takers, so they made the exams extremely easy to keep number of passes as close as possible to pre-COVID.

I believe the exam difficulty graph looks like this:

CalebWetherell

I just looked at FM as well, similar jump:

There must be something that explains the change, right? Did they change the syllabus, the exam generating algorithm, or something? Hard to imagine SOA would want a significant change like that to occur without seeking the feedback of its members.

I'm curious what the CAS Education Committee thinks about this.

ncrowder

BigPeePee Even comparing my manual's study problems that come from exams from the 80's with questions from exams from the 90's there is a huge difference in difficulty in my opinion.

underactuary212

The covid jump is due to people having the ability to freely cancel their exam if they don't feel ready

BigPeePee

underactuary212

LOL...
We already have confirmation above that the sitting was extremely easy.

HalfBakedBagel

I recently became an ASA earlier this year. I agree that the exams are slightly easier, but I do not think that is the only factor involved here.
1) The SOA has recently expanded the preliminary exams to 7. This is probably an extra year of travel time to ASA than before. That may deter some less determined students from taking the exams altogether. The remaining would likely be more committed.
2) More and more colleges are offering actuarial prep courses that are aligned with preliminary exams. Students taking these courses obviously have a head start on exam prep.
3) More practice materials are available. Specifically previous exam problems. If you can regurgitate exam problem formats enough to pass the exam, you may not have to have a deep knowledge of the underlying material.

BigPeePee

HalfBakedBagel

slightly

LOL...

The SOA has recently expanded the preliminary exams to 7. This is probably an extra year of travel time to ASA than before.

I would rather there by 5 hard exams than 7 easy exams. One of my coworkers who got stuck on MFE blew through the remaining prelims in 1.5 years after they removed stochastic calculus.

BigPeePee

ncrowder

I agree. The older problems are less direct, less straightforward. They also weren't that calculation-intensive and relied more on clever insight.
Today, the problems are longer but easier to 'figure out'.

CalebWetherell

It seems like there are two divergent ideas here.

Exam pass rates are slowly going up over time, and
the pass rate are unbelievably high the last two sittings.

The previous two sittings are more bizarre. I'm curious to see if the pass rates go back down or if this is a new normal. If it's a new normal, I think it's fair to question whether or not the standard to pass has been materially reduced in an undesirable way.

AvgPeePee

LOL classic "back in my day."
I just sat for FM in June, so I'm more qualified than my larger fellow forum member 😉 to speak on difficulty. Of course after you've passed an exam, and have more experience in the field, you'll think the past material you've covered was harder than when you see it today. That means you learned, good job!

Regarding the recent ~ 15% jump:

At least in my area all April FM sittings were canceled, but SOA gave the option, later on, for those that were sitting then to sit at the end of May. My friend decided to do that and passed it, but for some reason it's not showing on his actuarial-lookup transcript. So there's a good chance those 81 people sat for FM in May, not April. Only people confident in passing would have taken that May sitting. Same goes for the June sitting.

I was actually worried going into my June exam that they would make the exam harder to compensate for all the extra study time people that were planning on sitting in April now had. I really do not believe that increase was caused because SOA made the exam easier, just that people had more time to prepare and could reschedule for free to another date.

Weird that you would be using Covid (such an unprecedented event) to fabricate your false narrative.
One person says they found the exam easy... CONFIRMED!

BigPeePee

AvgPeePee

I have a hard time believing someone who passed FM when it had a 60+% passrate.
I think you're trying to search for any explanation to convince yourself that you didn't have it easy. Do you have proof that postponing an exam increases passrates? What you're not accounting for is that while some people did have more time to prepare, there are others who decide to take the postponed exam when they would not have taken the exam at the original testing date, so the net result should be close to +0%.

For example, in other professional exams that got delayed due to COVID, passrates have been stable YoY.
Oklahoma Bar exam July 2019 passrate - 73%
Oklahoma Bar exam July 2020 delayed to Sept 2020 passrate - 76%

The Actuarial Exams are the ONLY professional exams that increased dramatically in passrates.

Face it, the COVID sittings were much easier than normal.

campbell

Well, I could see the prelim exams being easier -- or at least just P & FM. They're definitely easier than the exams they originally replaced back in 2007 or so, mainly because a bunch of stuff was cut out from the exams they were in originally [calculus, econ (micro and macro)] and replaced with VEE.

I could even see them making the path to ASA easier -- that is one credential that has gone up and down considerably in difficulty of achieving over decades.

But I think you'll find the FSA exams are as difficult as they ever were, and often for the same reason: the syllabus is usually over disparate original texts, some more and some much less clear. The FSA exams are put together by FSAs (not necessarily true of the prelim exams), most of who work in that particular field. The FSA exams are a different kind of challenge from the prelims.

BigPeePee

campbell

The prelims are definitely the easiest they've ever been.
I suspect the SOA is eventually planning exam exemptions through accredited Actuarial Science colleges and universities to attract more people to the field. The # of test-takers has gone down significantly since 2007.