UNIVERSITY students in Brisbane and the Gold Coast thought they had it easy after an embarrassing exam bungle this week.

Exam papers marked with the correct answers were given to 400 students on Tuesday, sending one of Queensland’s biggest universities back peddling.

Students sitting the sustainable tourism end-of-semester exam were handed the multiple choice section with the correct answers already underlined.

A student, who asked not to be named, said the marked papers were taken back and they were directed to complete the short answer section only.

“I’m a bit disappointed on the university’s part — it seems like a pretty stupid mistake to make,” he said.

“It is pretty amusing and frustrating at the same time.”

Students were told in the exam they would resit the multiple choice section but have since been emailed saying the short answer would now make up the full 30 per cent of the exam.

The email, from the Nathan Campus course convener Rob Hales, stated:

“ ... The wrong version of the exam for 2204HSL (‘sustainable tourism’) was given to students this morning. The multiple choice answers were inadvertently included in the exam script to students.”

Mr Hales apologised for the mistake.

A Griffith University spokesman confirmed the bungle and said the error was identified when the exam started.

“Griffith regrets this error and to ensure no student is disadvantaged, all assessment completed, with the exception of the multiple choice section of (the) exam, will be taken into account in awarding student grades for the course.

“They were second and third year students studying ‘sustainable tourism’ within the business degree of tourism, sport and hotel management,” he said.

A representative of Griffith University Gold Coast Student Guild was unavailable for comment.

Griffith University has about 46,000 students enrolled across five campuses.

The university’s two-week semester one exam period started on Saturday.

Originally published as University’s massive exam fail