My experience is completely different. Due to the lack of record and a lot of both personal experience and trusted accounts I deem such exams completely untrust

My experience is completely different. Due to the lack of record and a lot of both personal experience and trusted accounts I deem such exams completely untrustworthy. The bias is both ways. Some teachers/examiners decide on the spot which questions to ask. Not all questions are the same. Some are easier and depending on the sympathy one can get one. Sometimes due to lack of accountability I even experienced complete dummy exams - a reason for which I decided to drop off from one. In college there was known strategy around one exam to not take part in written one as it was hellishly hard but instead go for oral one, where exam consisted of simply showing up. This goes other way around, too. E.g. powerful member of exam committee of exam I took long time ago commission was infamous for failing people if not bribed in a very specific manner (not cash to hand but require buying specific set of services from family member). I dismissed that as malicious rumors but it proved to be true. I wasn’t failed but was scored inadequately which slowed my career progress for next few years. I was told by academic staff foolproof strategies for failing students on oral exams. Like provide quick series of questions from various areas of topic, when they stumble due to stress finish them off with few extra ones. Other - ask questions so deep and profound they’ll either omit the details or start argue on ambiguity which are both enough reasons to fail. There was small scandal about PhD exam recordings (which are obligatory) being purged 10 days after the exam, even though one of failed student decided to fight the result. Due to lack of evidence the exam result was held valid. It really depends what kind of person is doing the exam. I’ve been always told that if one wants to skip exam they should go for oral instead of written one. Currently many are recorded but as they are widely used there’s minuscule chance they’ll ever be reviewed, and I recommend reviewing any piece of video if you think it’s easy. Find 3 seconds on 90 minutes video where student hands envelopes to the committee. People on generally aren’t nice and while there is a sentiment for the teachers they aren’t any more special than and other group. You get lazy, power hungry or simply malicious people there too. And thus written record is a safe two way.