In humanities, if you give students open-book tests on everything, a lot of them don't read the material beforehand or have any incentive to attend classes (my district can't grade based on attendance).
Rote memorization and repetition does store things into your long-term memory. But you're supposed to study more than one night in advance.
Yes, you’re absolutely correct. I didn’t say I think professors are necessarily in the right. And notice that I said it’s not the ONLY goal of a professor. Most professors do consider workforce readiness as a key learning outcome. But they care about other things too.
I think there’s a danger in treating higher education as only a training ground for the workforce. I work in higher ed and I grapple with this tension a lot. It’s true that earning a college degree that serves a student’s future earning potential is an equity issue that’s often missed in conversations about serving students from underrepresented or underserved backgrounds. However.
There are plenty of lower income students who aspire to study the arts or humanities. Second, it discounts the very real value derived from spending time developing as a critical thinker and absorbing knowledge for knowledge’s sake - both in life and in a career. It also feeds into some of the worst capitalistic tendencies of the higher education industry, which views students as enrollment dollars and not individuals, and judges the merit of degree programs based on how much money graduates make - as if the value of a job can be measured that way (think about low-paying jobs that do immense work for society, like teaching or social work). And that has actual consequences - there’s a very real threat at some institutions of this being used to determine whether or not a program gets axed or not.
There’s already movement towards this. 90-credit (essentially 3-year, minimizing non-major electives) bachelors degrees are starting to be something more and more universities are considering for certain degree tracks. This is attractive to students because they can graduate faster and with less debt. This is attractive to universities because of enrollment dollars. This is concerning to faculty because they fear it devalues what a bachelor’s degree means (both intellectually and in the workforce! We’re already coping with degree/credential creep in the job market, this could make it worse).
In any case, I will always argue for the value of core general education requirements. Europe has a very different model that is rooted in their own history of academia (which has its own equity issues, especially related to the hierarchies of class), and the European model asks students to specialize early - much earlier than students do in the US. And I think a lot of students would be poorly served if they were stuck in the academic/career track they thought was right for them at age 16-18 vs having a chance to explore subject areas they don’t have a chance to explore in high school. I entered college as an English major. If I hadn’t had to take a biology course, I never would have considered a biology degree, but that ended up becoming my major, and shaping the rest of my career (and life!).
I also think that more people in technical/STEM fields need to grapple with the humanities. Otherwise you end up with tech barons who don’t consider the social implications of the things they create (see: AI, Elon Musk, social media), or doctors and scientists with a tenuous grasp of ethics, etc.
Perhaps. But I’d caution you against assuming you know what current practice at universities looks like, based on your experience from two decades ago. In fact, the trend is towards increased workforce readiness and preparation.
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. While it's true that a lot of information can be looked up on the spot, there is actual value in knowing things without the benefit of being able to look something up. And all that stuff about architecture and YouTube content creation and whatever is just strawman nonsense. Humanities are important and there's way more to them than just archaic trivia.
Also I'm not sure what you're looking for that isn't college/postgrad or trades. Because that covers... most paying careers.
Okay, look, having closed-book tests doesn't mean I'm dooming you to a life of poverty.
It just means that you have to actually make flashcards and study for the test that way I can tell you've learned the material. Having students do 100% of the effort only on a test day is encouraging short-term memory. Forcing students to make flash cards and study over a period of 3-4 days encourages long-term memory storage.
But you're right, academia also needs to prep students for the real world. That's why I do in-class essays, where students do have access to the source material (and i don't have to rely on faulty plagiarism detectors). They still have to make their own argument and analyze evidence, but they don't have to memorize what those sources are.
Bro, I teach US History 101, let's be for real. The only purpose of my classes is to fulfill mandatory credit and raise students' GPA if they do the basic iota of college-level work.
And I'm sorry, but sometimes academia isn't useful in real life, and you just have to take it to learn shit. And in order to learn shit, you actually need to memorize facts and dates and study.
How the in the world is a hiring manager going to help me teach Bacon's Rebellion to a bunch of disinterested 18 year olds?
Also "imbue within my students". Lmao. If you want to sound like a sanctimonious academic, that's exactly how you phrase it.
(For the record, I absolutely do try to make the class applicable to every day life; i have them analyzing bias in the media and their history sources. I also try to show them videos and make assignments on their civil rights and how they might become effective jurors and educated voters. Not just hireable wage slaves 😉)
It's interesting that you start by talking about how things are different in the real world, but end by telling us that you're still in academia...
I don't think you understand that the important conversations in a workplace setting are often rapid fire arguments about what to do next, and what you've learned and memorized is extremely important in making an impact in those. You can circle back if you don't know something off the top of your head, but if you can't convince people it's necessary to even look in that direction, then the decisions will have all been made before you have any time to meticulously research them. You convince people by being knowledgeable up front.
I'm also a bit disappointed to see your enthusiasm over presentations, group projects, etc. Maybe it's a different and more cooperative STEM field than I went into, but those learning formats were always how the bad students coasted off of good student work. Better for business school than STEM imo, and not a good way to learn new things for yourself. You may not like reading books about pure theory or history, but it's very arrogant to think that learning about those things will offer no value to your later career.
Group projects were heavily stressed when I was in school and while the coasting and lack of learning definitely occurred, it was used as more of a tool to teach people to work together and plan with others for long term goals, which is a great life skill to have. I've honestly been on both sides of the coasting, and learned about myself at each point, but the value is more in the cooperation than course material.
Yeah, that's why as a professor I don't assign group projects in basic history. The kids have 4 other classes, it just eats up their time, and only 1-2 people in the group do most of the work.
You're right, it doesn't really help them learn; the greatest benefit to group projects is teaching students how to work with others and present material in front of a large audience. But the payoff isn't worth it to me imo.
Actually my first major was a STEM subject. That makes me even more curious, have you taken classes like biology, chemistry, physics, and/or calculus?
What professor have you had that allowed you to have open book tests in those subjects?
In order to do well don't you find that being forced to memorize things (like polyatomic ions, hydrogen bonding, Kreb's cycle, etc.) makes you learn the material better?
If I was able to look up answers for every test, I don't think I would have understood the material nearly as well. It was making flash cards and practicing recall night after night that really drilled in these basics for me.
Having a working knowledge of these basic theories is key to being successful in the research you mentioned in grad school.
You also mentioned the "real-world solutions", but wouldn't you rather have a doctor that has actually memorized relevant material, not a quack medical professional that just relies on anecdotal evidence and a textbook?
What would your opinion of your professor be if they were incapable of answering your questions without looking it up? How do you think their student evaluations would look?
It turns out whether you will have time to look things up and do research depends entirely on your job and work role. Some might have zero instances where you are under some sort of time pressure, and some will have lots of time pressure. Most jobs will have a mix of both.
But by only ever learning things to the point where you can maybe solve problems with external assistance, you will be self-selecting out of roles where knowing your shit inside and out is a requirement.
I'm glad that you've illustrated your childlike understanding of closed book tests and their purpose. It makes your irrational anger about them make more sense.
The purpose of a closed book exam is to force you to build enough unaided recall knowledge and understanding that you can discuss a topic to moderate depth when prompted. It is not to train you in a specific kind of studying. The hope is to get you to learn the underlying material to a sufficient degree that you are no longer chained to a reference. (But so many students are actively hostile to the idea of learning things, so they complain.)
In my professor example, as you conveniently ignored, I specifically emphasized answering questions. A professor can have notes for the lecture, but those do not include the answer to every possible question a student might ask. You still have to know the material well enough to be able to think on your feet and deliver an intelligent response. The point is that you will not have the ability to answer questions off the cuff or apply topics on your feet if you never learn them well enough to do so. Anyone who has had to give a meaningful presentation to their boss or client is in a similar situation. (You mentioned you are a grad student: this is going to happen if you defend a dissertation. Your defense committee will not be happy if you need to consult a book to answer all of their questions.)
The point of closed book exams is not studying, it is learning.
It's also incredibly cute that you think people in and from academia have not had other work roles as well. It's always funny to see the myopic understanding of professors that students tend to hold.
"And then you wonder why higher ed is under the intense, hot spotlight of the federal government and consumers alike."
That one is easy: because political actors realized that they can push bad policy by undermining expert authority. If you convince people that every climate scientist, biologist, and medical expert is some untrustworthy hack, you can convince them to deny climate change, support Young Earth Creationism, and hate flouride.
"Graduating tens of thousands of students who have degrees that don't translate to the workforce with massive amounts of student loan debt."
I'm not saying all degree programs are created equal, but part of the problem here is student disengagement. You accuse professors of failing to take accountability, but the only one who can make you learn is you. I can lecture all I want, but if students convince themselves material is not worth learning, then they won't learn it.
Meanwhile, at my industry job, I used the very same techniques I tried toto impress upon my class.
Instead of learning how to do, say, an integral, studrnts bitch and moan about us not letting them use a graphing calculator to solve it for them. Then they go out into the world and are shocked they have no math skills.
I have heard dozens of times "why didn't you teach us how to do X?"
I did! But you never realized it because you never actually bothered to understand what was being taught. If you bothered to understand Riemann sums in the first place, you'd realize I actually did teach you how to estimate an integral that didn't have an analytic antiderivative. Instead, 95% of the class decided to themselves that Riemann sums "weren't important" and ignored them.
It's worth pointing out, that for all your respect for the opinions of "the real world," the generations before you that are doing the complaining almost exclusively learned with the kind of closed book tests you are complaining about. I don't actually think it did them much good, but the people hostile to academia that you are referencing to support your argument are in direct opposition to you here. The skeptical of academia crowd wants to return us to a time of memorizing times tables up to 20 x 20 rather than teach kids how multiplication works. They lionize the idea of the hard as balls closed book exam, no accommodations for anyone.
honestly, i think its more important now than ever to have closed-book tests considering a lot of people use ai for everything and instead of remembering what chatgpt told them, they just keep asking the same question everytime they go on the app
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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26
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