STEM at large public schools is almost exclusively 100+ person classes with maybe 2 TAs, who are more interested in their research than grading exams. We end up with easy to grade exams. I went to a similarly, if not more, prestigious public school and cs exams were usually around 20 multiple choice and 2 or so extended response.
One of my colleagues uses multiple choice exams for his classes (online and in-person) but he gives them a ton of questions. Something like 90 for a 2hr test. His theory was that, sure, you could look up the answers to a few questions, but if you're doing that for every question you'll run out of time.
Your colleague would be wrong. I've passed multiple exams this way (they allowed Internet access because the prof thought the same way).
You can very likely answer around 1/4th of the questions immediately with less than passive participation in the course, so for the remaining 60 questions you'll get two minutes per question, which is completely manageable if you type and read fast enough.
Multiple choice questions are universally terrible and lazy, and should not be more than a small part of the exam mostly meant to provide easy points.
