I'm asking this question as a student, wondering what various pros/cons to the given formula for oral exams could be. Let me give some context first. I am a first year mathematics student at a university. The are two approaches available to students for every subject: There is a "basic" group and an "advanced group" and we were able to choose which one we wanted to attend at the beginning of both semesters with the possibility of moving from one group to another if we found the level inadequate for 2 weeks since the semester's start. The difference between groups is really large, to the point where the only people left in the advanced groups are ones who have either studied a significant amount of university-level maths in their free time in high school. So, in short, attending the advanced groups is completely voluntary and the courses can't be really treated as ordinary introductory ones, because while they might theoretically assume any background knowledge, they do require quite some mathematical maturity which is bound to come with the backgorund knowledge.
After this long rant we arrive at the actual question. In these advanced groups, students are required to know all the theorems together with complete proofs of all the theorems/propositions presented during the entire semester in the given course. Learning all that is obviously not an easy task - not only is that a lot of material, it is also significantly harder than expected from an ordinary first year course. What do you think about such a formula? Is it too much? Or is it actually a good thing to expect this much from students who are highly above "average"?
I think I did somewhat benefit from learning all the proofs in the first semester, but on the other hand the task seems like a bit unreasonable, since even professors use notes when presenting proofs during lectures.