Short answer: they are not being banned, but their share is likely to shrink. The head of Turkey's Council of Higher Education said at the opening of the 2026-2027 academic year that the spread of multiple-choice exams across universities is not something they consider right, and recommended more use of open-ended questions, project work and performance-based assessment. Universities were warned accordingly.
No regulation changed. Nobody will sit down to a midterm tomorrow and find an essay where a test used to be. But the format of university assessment is now an open question, and the same argument is running through school systems too.
What was the reasoning?
That the excuse for testing has weakened. The argument runs like this: with evening programmes closed and student numbers per course coming down, the practical reason for choosing a format that marks itself is weaker than it was. Setting an open-ended exam for a cohort of four hundred is genuinely hard; for forty it is not.
Notice that the recommendation names three formats, not one. Open-ended questions, projects and performance criteria sit in the same sentence, which means the issue is not test versus essay. It is whether the chosen method measures what the course actually claims to teach.
Will multiple choice disappear?
It should not, and probably will not. A well-written multiple-choice question is still the most efficient way to sweep a wide syllabus quickly. Where coverage is the point, anatomy terms, statutes, formulas, a test shows fast which corner of the material a student left empty.
The real argument is about proportion. When an entire course rests on one thirty-question paper, what gets measured is largely recognition. Whether a law student can draft a document or an engineering student can set up a solution does not appear anywhere on that sheet. Several academics make exactly this point: keep the format, cut its share.
Is written assessment fairer?
It measures more and it scores less reliably. In an open-ended answer the student builds the response, which separates knowing from recognising. Against that, two markers can give the same answer different scores, and only a clear mark scheme keeps that gap small.
The objections raised in practice land here. Marking question by question is heavy work, and subjectivity is a real risk. Both are solvable, but not automatically; they need published criteria and a route to appeal.
Are schools going the same way?
In Turkey, schools are already past the warning stage. School-wide written exams now run through one national platform, the questions are open-ended, marking follows a scheme and each question's score is recorded separately so that results break down by learning outcome rather than into a single grade.
The timing is not a coincidence. The same complaint is being made at both levels: a test cannot tell apart the student who recognises the right option from the student who can explain the topic.
What about national entrance exams?
Those stay as they are, for a reason that has nothing to do with pedagogy: scale. An exam taken by well over a million candidates on the same day cannot be marked by hand to one standard. Entrance exams are multiple choice because of logistics, so a shift inside universities does not imply a shift there.
What changes for a student?
How you study. For a course measured by testing, the payoff is in volume of practice questions. For a course measured by writing, it is in being able to explain. The method for the second is old and simple: finish a topic, close the book, and explain it onto a blank page. Half a page written out, then checked against the book, beats rereading the chapter for the same amount of time.
The second habit is note-taking. Downloading the slides and keeping them does nothing for an open-ended exam; three-line summaries in your own words do most of the work. Our pieces on spaced repetition and active recall and studying for exams efficiently cover the routine around it, and if you want to practise building answers rather than picking them, the guide to answering open-ended questions is the practical part.