My degree was far more than just an exam, I think it was only 40% of the final grade. Coursework and group work made up the remainder.

Very unlikely because universities would miss out on charging you years of fees.

The meritocratic thing to do would be to have national standardised exams for every level of education : but no one has that.

The closest to that is CSPA.io, but they don't confer degrees. It's billed as the SAT for software engineers.