Dear Editor:
In response to the letter by John Major and Stephen Mildenhall (“Exam Restructuring Proposal,” AR, November-December 2022) that responded to my article “Proposed New Direction for the CAS Syllabus and Exams” (AR, September-October 2022), I would like to thank Major and Mildenhall for the kind comments and more importantly for suggesting an improvement to the proposal. When I wrote that article, I expected that there would be a wide range of responses to the proposals in it. If any of you find there is some part of the article that you disagree with, I would very much like to hear what part you disagree with and why and what you would do differently. I can be reached at mikeplcact@gmail.com. I view responses that disagree with the proposal as being similar to what I found when building models: One often learns more from diagnosing what went wrong and learning how to fix it than when everything works. Comments noting which items should be implemented are welcome too. In particular, I would like to hear from our CAS Admissions group on what they would change and why. To me, the “why” doesn’t mean reporting that this is what the current method/Job Task Analysis tells us we should do. I would like to hear why the changes proposed in the article are sensible, given changing technology and analytical methods as well as the business environment in which we work.
—Michael R. Larsen, FCAS, MAAA
