If you look at it another way, it's like a lifetime warranty. You can't trust an appliance vendor to provide quality, but you can trust that if they have a warr

If you look at it another way, it's like a lifetime warranty. You can't trust an appliance vendor to provide quality, but you can trust that if they have a warranty they will meet the conditions where it will make financial sense to have one. Having such an exam adds enormous extraneous pressure that does not reflect the reality of conducting research, but it is this pressure that guarantees (with some exceptions) that the student has been coerced into learning the material to a sufficient standard. There will always be the cramming psychopath who grabs a first after just a week of study and who retains nothing of it, but most students just have to learn intensely over the course of a year to pass through the filter. In some ways, this is also why it's common in the UK for employers to not care so much about the specific degree, just that you have one with good grades from a reputable institution.