Originally posted by MD Optofonik It was, and I imagine still is, standard practice. A syllabus is not a set of options. One does not buy what texts and materials one wishes, one buys what is required. Pursuing photography outside of an academic setting does not require standardization, testing, and evaluation. Cheating is a very real issue for institutions and instructors and cause for serious disciplinary action; expulsion is often the result. Requiring an all manual camera is just another tool in discouraging such behavior, even from the best students, when the pressure is on.
Perhaps, times have changed and requirements aren't so stringent anymore. Everything seems geared toward the lowest common denominator these days so it wouldn't surprise me.
Well, we don't know what level class this is; I suppose it could be some phd-level seminar in "junky old cameras in art" or something. My comments are based on the usual introductory/undergrad classes.
There is a range of reasonableness that an instructor has to conform to, and manual-only is not a reasonable requirement. Certainly not every instructor operates on the bleeding edge, and that's ok, but this is way, way beyond that. It would be like a computer programming instructor making students submit programs on punched cards.
When I taught in college, sometimes students cheated. Technology has made cheating easier and more difficult to detect in some respects, although there is software available now that attempts to combat that. But I absolutely don't see how using an auto-exposure camera in a photography class would be a mechanism for cheating.
Incidentally, from personal experience I can tell you that students ask about variations to what's stated as required in a syllabus all the time. Besides scheduling issues, they ask if they can use the previous edition of the textbook, or if they can use an entirely different book, or countless other variations. So ultimately yes, students do buy (or not) what they feel like. Instructors try to evaluate students based on results, not what text they used to get the results.
I don't believe film, with or without auto-exposure, has any place in anything short of a fairly advanced class, perhaps one covering historical photographic techniques, but assuming that someone believes film is an acceptable approach, certainly any camera with adjustable shutter and aperture would be more than sufficient.